


Supergirl Pride Week Prompt Fills

by SandstoneSunspear



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, jewish!Maggie Sawyer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:22:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24629983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandstoneSunspear/pseuds/SandstoneSunspear
Summary: A week's worth of prompts for Pride Month that Gwatson2304 and I came up with.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Lucy Lane, Alex Danvers/Lucy Lane/Maggie Sawyer, Lucy Lane/Kate Kane, Lucy Lane/Maggie Sawyer, Maggie Sawyer/Kate Kane
Comments: 46
Kudos: 88





	1. Gifts - Kate/Lucy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gwatson2304](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gwatson2304/gifts).



> Class rings at West Point are given out during a cadet's senior year. Kate is a senior at West Point when Lucy arrives as a plebe (first year). 
> 
> This fic also takes place in Fragments!verse, where Maggie and Kate get married in secret before Maggie ships out to National City. Maggie, Lucy, Kate, and Alex are all dating each other.

**Kate**

The first thing that Lucy Lane notices after she and Kate start dating is that everyone in Kate’s life seems oblivious to the fact that Kate went to West Point. 

(Bruce knows. Lucy knows he knows because she’s asked him and his eyes darkened with anger even though his response was casual. Maggie knows too, but she doesn’t seem to know as much because her eyes don’t darken when Lucy asks her).

The second thing that she notices is that Kate’s saber never makes an appearance after the four of them move in together. Lucy’s does because it’s accompanied her on every move she’s made, but Kate’s doesn’t. When she asks Maggie about it, she gets a confused look from her girlfriend.

“What saber?” Maggie asks.

Lucy blinks. “Her cadet saber?” The confused look doesn’t grow any clearer, so Lucy tries a different angle, “It’s the same sword that I have. We all get them as cadets and–”

“She doesn’t have one,” Maggie says.

Now it’s Lucy’s turn to be confused. “What do you mean she doesn’t have one? Every grad–”

“Kate didn’t graduate,” Maggie reminds her. “She left because it wasn’t for her in the end.”

It wasn’t for Kate in the end? What the hell is Maggie talking about? 

Lucy laughs because that has to be a joke. “Mags,” she says once her laughter has died down, “Kate was First Captain. She was–”

“First Captain?” The confused look is back. “What are you talking about, Luce?”

The second laugh that Lucy lets out is nervous. Maggie has to be fucking with her now. 

“First Captain,” she says again. “It’s the top cadet at West Point. Kate–”

Lucy cuts herself off when she notices that there’s still no recognition of the term on Maggie’s face. Realisation dawns on her.

“Kate never told you,” Lucy whispers.

Maggie frowns. “Kate never told me what?”

“Nothing,” Lucy says. 

She must say it too quickly because she sees Maggie’s frown deepen. 

“Honestly, it’s nothing,” Lucy tries to assure her. “If Kate never mentioned it, then it’s obviously nothing.” 

It’s not nothing and Lucy has a feeling Maggie can tell.

She needs to get out of here. 

“I have to go,” Lucy says. “I just remembered that I have a meeting with Vasquez today.”

“Lucy, baby, it’s Saturday.”

Lucy presses a quick kiss to Maggie’s cheek. “I’ll be back later, I love you, bye,” she says quickly before practically sprinting out of the apartment.

-

Lucy calls Vasquez.

“West Point digitised all of their records back in 2017,” she says as soon as they pick up. “I need you to get me the records from their Directorate of Logistics and the Service and Issue Center.”

 _“Well, good afternoon to you too, Director,”_ Vasquez greets dryly. _“Now, why are you asking me to break the law on this fine Saturday?”_

Lucy rolls her eyes. “It’s only breaking the law if I use the information for nefarious purposes,” she says.

 _“Something tells me that defence will not go over well with a judge if used in a court of law, Director.”_ There’s a rustle on the other end that tells Lucy that Vasquez is moving, hopefully towards a computer. _“Still didn’t answer the question, though.”_

Lucy sighs. “I need requisition records from 1994. For reasons.”

 _“Uh huh.”_ The sound of fingers against a mechanical keyboard come across loud and clear. “ _Is there anything in specific you’re looking for?”_

“Equipment returns.” Like a saber. “The date of return should be August 29, 1994.”

 _“That’s...extremely specific.”_ More typing. _“Okay, I have one item on record.”_

Lucy has a gut feeling that she already knows what it is, but still she asks, “What is it?”

_“Records say it’s a cadet saber. Returned by a Cadet Kane at 1500 on August 29, 1994.”_

“Is the saber still there?”

Some clicks. Then, _“Yeah, looks like it.”_

That’s all Lucy needs to hear. 

“Thanks, Vas.”

 _“Anytime, Director.”_ A beat. _“Can I ask what all of this is for?”_

“No.”

Lucy hangs up before Vasquez can ask any further questions and sighs.

Fact: Kate Kane had been kicked out of West Point because she was gay.

Fact: Kate’s cadet saber is in the West Point armoury, having been returned by Kate the day she was kicked out.

Lucy rubs the side of her head to try and push away the headache she can feel starting to form.

It’s not fair. Nothing about Kate’s situation had ever been fair. It makes Lucy’s heart ache. Kate deserved better then and she deserves better now.

“Siri, call Becca Anderson.”

_“Calling Becca Anderson.”_

Lucy closes her eyes and lets the sound of the call wash over her. It feels like they’re only shut for a second before the call connects.

_“Lieutenant Colonel Anderson, how can I help you?”_

“Becca, it’s Lucy.”

_“Oh, hey! How’re you doing?”_

Lucy waves the question away even though Becca can’t see her. “I’m doing fine,” she says. “Listen, I didn’t really call to chat. I’m calling because I need to know if you’re still in charge of the Quartermaster Division at West Point?”

_“I am, yeah. Why?”_

“You remember how I told you that you owed me for covering your ass after you and the girls from D company disassembled that hummer and reassembled it in the dining hall the week before finals?” she asks. 

_“You’re calling it in?”_

“I’m calling it in.”

_“Alright, Lane. You have my attention. What am I getting?”_

“A saber.” Lucy lets her head loll back against the headrest of the driver’s seat. “From Ring Weekend, 94.”

-

Lucy is up to something. 

What it is, Kate has no idea, but she still finds herself on edge. Her nerves aren’t helped by Maggie asking about her West Point days, something she hasn’t done in years. Kate does as she normally does: she skirts around Maggie’s questions, tries her best to ignore the way her stomach twists when Maggie mentions First Captain, and hopes that Maggie will drop the matter. She doesn’t want to answer any questions about West Point. She never does.

(Not because she’s ashamed, far from it. She doesn’t like to answer questions about West Point because even though it’s been years, the memory of the commandant’s office still stings).

Maggie does eventually drop it and Kate’s nerves calm down. 

Then, she comes home to find a long wooden box on the dinner table.

-

The box has the West Point crest etched into it.

Kate feels her stomach drop at the sight. There’s a label slapped on the side that reads _MAJ L. LANE_. Suddenly, her dropping stomach twists with bitterness. She’s not jealous of Lucy. She’s not.

(She is, just a little bit, because Lucy got to graduate and have a career in the military while Kate got expelled. Kate will never admit it, though).

“I didn’t hear you get home.”

Kate jumps at the sound of Lucy’s voice. 

“Sorry,” Lucy apologises, “I thought you heard me coming up behind you.”

“I, uh, I was kinda distracted. By your mail,” she says lamely, motioning to the box on the table.

“It’s not mine,” Lucy says.

Kate frowns. “It has your name on it,” she points out.

“It’s not mine,” Lucy says again. “It’s for you.”

Kate can feel her frown deepen. What the hell is Lucy talking about?

Lucy walks to the table and opens the box to reveal a cadet saber. 

Kate’s breath catches in her throat. It’s not just a cadet saber. It–

It’s _her_ cadet saber. The one she turned in the day she was dismissed from the Academy. 

Kate stares at it. “I don’t understand.”

“They took it back, didn’t they?” Lucy asks.

Kate’s jaw clenches instinctively at the question. She’s done her best to make her peace with what happened, but the memory of the commandant’s office is still a sore spot for her. 

“I gave it back,” she says stiffly. 

It’s not a complete lie. She _had_ , but it hadn’t been something she _wanted_ to do.

“Yeah, well, I’m giving it back to you,” Lucy says.

“Why?”

Why does Lucy care so much about a saber? West Point was years ago. Ring Weekend was years ago. The commandant’s office was _years_ ago. Why bring it up now?

“Because,” Lucy licks her lips, “because it wasn’t fair. You deserved better than that. You should be able to tell people that you were First Captain, that you made it all four years. I can’t undo what happened, god knows that I wish I could, but I can at least try to make it better.”

Kate softens. “Lucy…”

This is Cadet Lane to a T. Kate remembers the scrappy female cadet who took responsibility for her fellow cadets without even being asked to, who refused to leave any of them behind.

She watches Lucy trail her fingertips across the scabbard. 

“I watched them escort you off campus,” Lucy mentions absently. “It was the Monday–”

“After Ring Weekend.”

“Yeah.” Lucy nods. “I didn’t know why, none of us did. Not until dinner. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more terrified in my life, hearing that they kicked you out because of DADT.”

Kate’s heart aches at the confession. 

“You were always at the back of my mind during my four years there, you know? I used to dream about what my plebe year would’ve looked like with you as First Captain.”

“I like to think I would’ve been a good one,” Kate blurts out before she can stop herself.

Lucy smiles. “You were. I remember when a girl broke her leg during the March Back. You were there before anyone else and carried her the remaining six miles back to West Point whilst in full kit.”

Kate can feel herself blushing at the casual reverence in Lucy’s voice. She hadn’t done anything special. It had just been the logical thing to do. She couldn’t stop the road march and medics had been too far out. 

“When Maggie told me that you told her that you left West Point because it wasn’t for you, I thought she was kidding because you were First Captain, Kate. You were First Captain–”

“And then I wasn’t anymore, Luce,” Kate cuts in gently. “I was First Captain and then I wasn’t because I refused to compromise who I was. Although, in the long run, I guess I did because a cadet will not lie–”

“Cheat, steal, or tolerate those that do,” Lucy finishes for her.

“Yup,” Kate says. “And I’ve been doing the former for 20 years.”

She reaches for the box holding the saber. Her saber. The metal scabbard is still as smooth to the touch as she remembers it being. 

Lucy’s hand covers her. Her touch is soft, and it sends Kate’s heart fluttering. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get tired of the feel of Lucy’s touch, the same way she’ll never grow tired of Alex or Maggie’s. 

“Maybe, maybe that can change,” Lucy murmurs. 

Maybe it can. The saber isn’t a cure all. It can’t change the past, won’t fix the fact that Kate was expelled just because of who she loved, but it can salve the hurt. 

“It can,” Kate says, voice soft. She turns and presses a soft kiss to Lucy’s lips. “Thank you,” she whispers against them.

The saber isn’t a cure all.

It’s a gift.

It’s closure, closure that Kate never realised she needed until Lucy Lane re-entered her life.

Lucy kisses her back.

Kate lets her eyes slip shut so she can enjoy the feel of Lucy’s lips against hers. 

“You’re welcome,” she hears Lucy tell her.

“I love you,” Kate says quietly.

Lucy stands on her tiptoes to press her forehead to Kate’s. “I love you too.”

**Lucy**

It doesn’t take Kate long to notice how alike she and Lucy are. They’re both daughters of military men, they’ve both had extreme expectations placed upon them, they’re both West Point bred (though Lucy is the one who graduated), and they both have dead mothers.

When she mentions that last similarity to Maggie, her wife just stares at her with a look of exhausted disbelief.

(It makes Kate feel a little guilty for having sprung her revelation on Maggie right after a 12-hour shift, but with Alex in LA for a medical conference and Lucy in DC for a lecture series at Georgetown, Maggie’s the only person currently available).

“She’s like me, Mags,” Kate says, “but shorter and also hotter. And also Lucy’s not Jewish.”

Maggie shakes her head, as if trying to clear her ears. “Jesus Christ, Kate.”

“What?” Kate folds her arms. “I’m not wrong.”

“No, you’re not,” Maggie agrees. “But babe, out of all the similarities you both share, the dead mothers is the one you picked?”

“I mean, we both have weird relationships with our respective sisters, but as far as I know, Lois has never tried to kill Lucy so…” Kate shrugs. “That check is for my column.”

Maggie presses her fingertips to the side of her head. “That’s not a good thing, Kate.”

“Most of the similarities she and I share aren’t good things, Maggie,” Kate points out.

Being the daughter of Jacob Kane was likely a thousand steps up from being the daughter of Samuel Lane, but it still had its own pressures. West Point had forged them into the people and leaders that they were, but certain events — Ring Weekend in particular — had left their own traumas on the two of them. And the dead mothers. That was its own mess. At least Ella Lane had fallen to cancer.

“Why are you so focused on the similarities, Kate?” Maggie asks. “Is it because you think—”

Kate can tell exactly where Maggie’s line of thought is going and cuts it off before Maggie can voice it. 

“No,” she denies. “Maggie, honey, no. You know I would never think that and I don’t.”

She would never think that Maggie is only attracted to Lucy just because of how similar the two of them are. Kate knows that it’s the small things that are unique to Lucy that ultimately caught her wife’s attention, not the similarities. 

Kate runs a hand through her hair. “I’m just, it makes me think about things. You know how I am when my mom’s anniversary comes around.”

Maggie nods. “I do.”

“Lucy’s the same way,” she says. “I think Ella’s anniversary is coming up pretty soon—”

“You don’t know?” Maggie asks, eyebrow raised.

Kate has to fight the urge to grow defensive. She can tell that Maggie didn’t ask that to be judgemental, but rather because she’s surprised that Kate doesn’t already know.

“I’ve never asked,” she admits. “I could probably google it, but that feels so informal and probably rude. I figured Lucy would tell me when she wanted to.” 

Kate may be the world’s greatest detective, but there are lines that even she won’t cross. Probing into things like the deaths of loved ones without being asked is one of them. 

She sees Maggie soften. “Kate…”

“Lucy’s pulling away,” Kate says. “She’s getting into her own head. It’s why she took the offer from Georgetown to do that lecture series even though she hates public speaking outside of a courtroom, Mags.”

It’s a difference between her and Lucy that Kate chalks up to their backgrounds. Lucy may be a lawyer that testifies on the Hill with some regularity, but she’s been in the public eye so many times for all the wrong reasons thanks to Sam Lane. Kate, on the other hand, is the face and CEO of Kane Industries. She thrives in the public eye and moves through it with the grace of a trained dancer.

The nod of agreement that Maggie gives tells Kate that her wife has noticed the same thing. 

“Lucy pulls away like you do,” Maggie says quietly. 

Kate does her best to keep from flinching at Maggie’s words. She knows that she pulls away when her mother’s Yahrzeit rolls around, and she knows that it hurts Maggie every time she does. She’s tried to be better about it, but it’s still a work in progress.

“I want to help her hurt a little less,” Kate says. 

“I know, and that’s what I love about you.” Maggie takes Kate’s hand and gives it a brief squeeze. “You should probably call Lois.”

Kate blinks. “Wait, what?”

“Ella was Lois’s mom too, Kate,” Maggie reminds her. “She probably has a better understanding of what it’s gonna take to bring Lucy out of her funk.”

Kate wrinkles her nose. “But Lois, really Maggie?”

She and Lois know each other, but Kate wouldn’t say that they’re close enough to suddenly start talking about dead mothers. They were just getting out of the awkward stage that had developed after Lois found out that Kate was dating Lucy.

“I mean, you could try to call Sam Lane,” Maggie drawls. 

The cheeky grin that accompanies that statement tells Kate that her wife is joking, but it’s not enough to stop the full body shudder that rises at the very thought of calling the man. 

“I’ll take my chances with Lois.”

-

Kate calls Lois.

_“Lois Lane, Daily Planet.”_

“Hey, Lois, it’s Kate,” she says. 

_“Oh! Sorry about that. Your number comes up as unlisted on my phone—”_

“Yeah, that’s because I’m calling from my personal number.” Kate shakes her head. “That’s beside the point, though, because—”

 _“Because you’re interested in doing an interview with your favourite reporter?”_ Kate can practically hear the wide grin in Lois’s voice.

“Please, Kara Danvers is my favourite reporter.” 

_“Oh, ouch. Nepotism much?”_

Kate rolls her eyes. “Not even close. Look, I’m not calling for an interview. I’m calling about Lucy. Well, no, I’m calling about your mom.”

_“Oh.”_

“Not for details or anything! Just, her Yahrzeit is coming up, right?” As soon as the words leave her lips, Kate winces. She’s normally much smoother than this but right now, she’s butchering things left and right.

_“Yahrzeit...you mean death anniversary?”_

“Yeah.” Kate nods even though Lois can’t see her.

_“I didn’t realise that Lucy told you.”_

Kate winces again, this time because of how neutral Lois’s tone is. 

“She uh, she didn’t. I guessed,” Kate admits. “She’s pulling away and it reminded me of some things.”

_“Things?”_

Kate waves the question away. “Story for another time,” she says quickly. “Is there anything that I can do to help Lucy? Pictures I can get my hands on or something I can make?”

Lois’s end of the line is silent. It goes on for so long that Kate worries that the reporter hung up.

“Lois?”

 _“Do you cook?”_ Lois asks abruptly. 

Kate blinks. “Yes? I might have more money than god, but I know how to cook,” she says. She knows that Lois is joking, but that knowledge isn’t enough to keep a bit of annoyance from flaring up.

There’s a sigh from Lois. _“There’s, there’s this one dish that mom used to make,”_ she starts. _“Lucy loved it and so did I. Mom taught us how to make it, but I never paid close enough attention to get it right. I think Lucy tried to make it once after mom died.”_

“It didn’t go well.”

Kate can hear a rustle, like Lois is shrugging. _“It tasted fine to me but Lucy said it was off. I don’t think she’s tried to make it since.”_

“Do you have the recipe?” Kate asks.

_“Yeah. I can send it. Just a heads up, though, there’s no measurements for any of it because mom liked to eyeball everything.”_

“My wife is the same way when it comes to cooking,” Kate says.

Lois laughs. _“I know. It drives my husband up a wall. He insists that measurements have to be exact, says it’s the Kryptonian in him.”_

Kate snorts. “That’s bullshit. Kara doesn’t measure anything when she cooks. I swear, the kid just throws everything into a pot then bam! A meal that I would’ve killed for at West Point.”

 _“Sounds like Kara.”_ A sigh. _“I’ll send you the recipe after I get home from work.”_

“Sounds like a plan.”

_“And Kate?”_

Kate raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

_“Thank you for doing this. For looking after Lucy like this.”_

“She means a lot to me,” Kate says, trying to brush Lois’s thanks aside. This is such a small thing. There’s no point in making a big deal about it.

Lois chuckles. _“I can tell. Alright, I’ll talk to you later.”_

“Bye, Lois.”

-

The recipe looks easy enough.

It has a list of ingredients that Lois was kind enough to translate from Arabic to English, eight steps and, for some odd reason, a child’s doodle of a fish near the bottom. 

(Kate won’t know until later that Lucy drew the fish years ago to try and cheer Ella up after a long day).

Kate already has most of the ingredients at home, with the fish being the only exception. That’s quickly fixed with a trip to Little Lebanon.

“Alright,” she mutters once everything is spread across the kitchen, “how hard could this be?”

(The answer is very. She has Bruce try her first batch and gives him food poisoning).

-

Kate is up to something. 

What it is, Lucy has no idea and it puts her on edge. She doesn’t like not knowing things. It leaves her feeling off balance, a feeling that isn’t helped by her exhaustion or the phone call from Lois. Their relationship has gotten better since Lucy joined the DEO, but the second Lois mentions their mother, Lucy’s walls go right back up.

(It’s not that Lucy doesn’t want to talk about Ella. She does. But talking about her with Lois has always been hard because of how differently they reacted after Ella died).

For once, Lois seems to pick up on Lucy’s walls going back up because she immediately changes the subject and asks how things are with Alex, Maggie, and Kate. The rest of the call goes as awkwardly as ever, but it’s enough to calm Lucy’s nerves. 

Then, she comes home to an apartment that smells like something out of her memories.

-

It takes a second for the smells to register with Lucy’s brain. When it finally does, she freezes. 

It smells just like old memories, like the old home she hasn’t been to since her mother died. 

She sets her bags down and glances towards the kitchen. There is a very small, irrational part of Lucy that expects her mother to be the one standing in the kitchen. That’s the part of herself that she blames when she feels surprised to see Kate standing in there instead.

Kate’s humming a tune whilst removing the cover from a pot on the stove. It takes Lucy a moment to figure out where she’s heard it before: it’s a song from a Lebanese indie rock band that she had mentioned liking to Kate ages ago. It’s such a domestic scene that Lucy’s heart flutters at the sight and sounds.

Lucy’s so caught up in watching the scene in front of her that she doesn’t notice that Kate has finished.

“Surprise, Luce.”

Lucy jumps at the sound of Kate’s voice. She looks from the stove to the counter, where a plate now sits. A lump rises in her throat when she sees what’s on it.

“Is that…?”

“Sayadiyeh? Yeah, it is.” Kate nods, pulling a fork from the drawers and hands it to Lucy. 

Lucy takes it, eyes still on the steaming plate of rice and fish. “I don’t understand.”

Their anniversary isn’t for a few more months, and Lucy’s fairly certain that it’s not her birthday. She can’t think of any reason why Kate would go out of her way to make something like this.

“Your mom’s Yahrzeit is coming up,” Kate says.

Lucy feels her stomach drop. 

Kate must notice, because she hurriedly continues, “I, I’m not gonna pry and ask when exactly it is. You can tell me when you’re ready to. I, I know what it’s like, what you’re feeling, and I wanted to do something to maybe make it hurt a little less.”

Lucy softens. “Kate…”

Kate looks away, pink starting to dust her cheeks. “I uh, I got the recipe from Lois,” she says. “I told her what I wanted to do, and she mentioned that you really liked this,” she motions to the plate, “so I had her send me the recipe. I promise it’s edible now!”

It’s not often that Lucy gets to see Kate Kane so flustered. The way she’s babbling reminds Lucy of Alex. If she’s being honest with herself, she finds it kind of cute.

She places a hand on Kate’s arm, cutting off the stream of words. “Would you mind taking a step back so I can get to the plate?” she asks.

“Oh! Yeah, of course!” 

Lucy cuts a piece of fish and scoops it up along with some rice using the fork whilst Kate moves out of the way, then takes a bite.

“Lois had to translate the recipe for me before she sent it because it’s in Arabic,” she hears Kate say behind her. “There also weren’t any measurements, so I did a lot of guesswork to figure out the spice ratios and everything.”

Lucy closes her eyes, half because she’s trying to focus on the flavours and half because what she’s tasting brings tears to her eyes. The sayadiyeh tastes nothing like it did the time she tried to make it after her mother died. This, this tastes just like she remembers it. It reminds her of better days, before her mother got sick and things fell apart between her and Lois. Before she threw herself into trying to satisfy her father’s expectations. 

Tears slip down her face. Kate must notice, because Lucy hears her let out an alarmed yelp.

“Crap, it tastes terrible doesn’t it? Lucy, baby, I’m so sorry-”

Lucy shakes her head, cutting Kate off. “No,” she whispers. “Don’t be sorry. It’s perfect.”

“Yeah?” Kate sounds cautious, like she’s not quite sure if Lucy’s being truthful or just trying to make her feel better.

Lucy sets the fork down and opens her eyes. “Yeah. It-” She licks her lips because her throat suddenly feels so dry- “it tastes just the way my mom used to make it.”

She feels Kate wrap her arms around her waist.

“I’m glad,” Kate murmurs, placing her head on Lucy’s shoulder. “I just, I wanted to make something that tasted good and helped.”

“It’s perfect,” Lucy says again because it is perfect. 

She takes a second bite with Kate’s arms still around her waist, and it’s even better than the first one. She hums as the flavours come through and thinks about how her mother used to say that the best tasting food tasted that way because it had love in it. Lucy hadn’t understood what her mother meant until today. 

“Kate?”

“Yeah, Luce?”

“Thank you. You didn’t have to do this-” Lucy stops mid-sentence when Kate brushes a kiss to the side of her head.

“I know I didn’t have to. I wanted to, because I love you,” Kate says softly. 

Lucy leans back into Kate’s embrace. “I love you too,” she says back and she means it.


	2. Sport - The Directorship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy Lane knows she has a chip on her shoulder. She doesn't bother hiding it. It keeps most people away. Most people, except a Stanford pre-med who can't seem to take a hint or a fencing match seriously to save her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So G picked Sports as the Day 2 prompt. This is my take on a collegiate fencing!au where Lucy gets outed whilst at West Point and subsequently transfers to Stanford after being kicked out.

Lucy Lane has a chip on her shoulder.

It’s been a Thing ever since she transferred to Stanford. She figures that getting kicked out of West Point - a school that she fought and bled to get into - will do that to a person. She’s done her best to keep it under control by throwing herself into her new life at Stanford with an intensity that only a West Point cadet can have. So far, it’s worked. She’s at the top of all of her classes, save for statistics. She’s even managed to cut her way almost to the top of Stanford’s fencing team. 

(Lucy thinks she would already be there, if not for Alex fucking Danvers).

-

Alex Danvers is a good fencer and Lucy—

Lucy kind of hates her. 

Alex is the only person standing between her and the captain’s spot on the team. Her technique with the saber is unorthodox but effective, and Lucy will admit a grudging admiration for it. The fencer herself, though? Lucy holds no admiration for.

Lucy sees Alex’s hand twitch. It’s the only thing she needs to see before her own saber lashes out and strikes Alex hard. 

“Point, Lane!” Coach Jones announces. “Alright, break for 15 then back in your places!”

Alex laughs as she pulls off her helmet. “Damn, Lane! Give a girl a chance to have the right of way for once!”

Lucy is glad she still wears the older style fencing helmets so that no one can see how she scowls behind the tightly woven mesh grid. That’s another thing she hates about Danvers - her inability to take anything seriously. It drives Lucy up a wall, the way that Alex treats each bout, practice or not, like a game or as just another means to have fun. 

“And let you score a point on me, Danvers? Not a chance in hell.” 

She would sooner eat glass than let Alex beat her.

“Oof, that’s cold, Lane.”

Lucy pulls her helmet off and makes her way over to the bench. “That’s not my problem,” she says.

“What exactly _is_ your problem?” Alex asks.

Lucy stops to glance back at Alex. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean, I’m trying to crack some jokes and ease the tension, Lane,” Alex says, “but you’re all stiff and shit. Makes me wonder if you’re naturally this bitchy or if it’s just me.”

It’s definitely Alex, because Alex doesn’t seem to understand that fencing isn’t a game. It’s a way out, a way to leave your mark, a way to make a name for yourself. 

Lucy stares at Alex. Then, “I’m not here to have fun, Danvers,” she says, trying to keep her voice neutral. “I’m here to win, and to make sure the rest of the team wins.”

“...well then.” Alex’s tone is flat. “I can see that you’re not big into being friendly.”

Friends? With Alex Danvers? Like hell.

Lucy shrugs. “I have more important things to focus on, Danvers.”

Things like the tournament they have in a week or her coursework. Not things like friends. Lucy doesn’t do friends, not anymore. Not since she left the Commandant’s office months ago.

There’s a scoff from Alex, like she’s dissatisfied by Lucy’s answer. 

Lucy ignores it, choosing instead to set her helmet on the bench and grab her water bottle. She keeps her back to Alex and focuses on the wall behind the bench. She takes a long swing of water and feels Alex’s eyes burning into her back.

-

“Lucy, a word?”

Lucy pulls her helmet off and shakes her hair out. “Yeah, Coach?”

“The Western Invitational is next weekend.”

Lucy nods. She’s aware. It’s why she’s pushing as hard as she is. The Western Invitational will be the first tournament she’s participated in since her transfer from West Point.

“As I’m sure you’re aware of by now, I’ve been looking for someone to replace Veronica since we resumed the season-”

Another nod from Lucy. Veronica Sinclair’s spectacular fall from grace back in December has been the talk of the collegiate fencing community since it happened. From the way that Coach Jones’s face twists into a frown when he says Veronica’s name, Lucy can tell that it’s a sore spot for him. 

“-and I’ve decided that I’m naming you-” Lucy’s straightens, almost puffs her chest up with pride. Almost, until she hears him say, “and Alex co-captains.”

Just like that, Lucy’s chest falls back down. Her stomach twists as she stares at him. 

“Co-captains?” she manages to choke out.

Coach Jones nods. “You and Alex are probably the best fencers I have on this team. It only makes sense to make you both captains.”

He can’t be serious.

Lucy does her best to keep her face neutral at the news. Something must come through though, because the next thing she knows, he’s sighing and running a hand over his hair.

“Look, Lucy, I’m going to be frank,” he says. “You’re a great fencer. Your record out of the Atlantic Conference speaks for itself and the leadership experience that you have compared to most of the other people on this team is likely second to none. But you have a serious chip on your shoulder.”

Lucy doesn’t bother denying his statement. She knows she does, but she has it under control. If anything, it’s made her a better fencer.

“If it weren’t for that, you would be my pick in a heartbeat,” he continues. “Honestly, if you hadn’t transferred here, Alex would be my pick, but after everything that happened with Veronica…” 

He trails off, but Lucy’s been fencing long enough to know when to read between the lines and complete his thoughts. Veronica Sinclair had been one of the best collegiate fencers in the nation. If the rumours were to be believed, she had been even on the short list for the US Olympic team. _Had_ been, until it was discovered that she had falsified her records, doped in at least three major tournaments, and had managed to convince several junior fencers on Stanford’s team to do the same.

Coach Jones shakes his head. “I’m not comfortable having this team led by a single captain,” he says. “I need leaders I can trust, leaders who balance each other out and check each other.”

And he honestly thinks that Alex Danvers will do that? 

“Coach, Danvers is…” Undisciplined. Too cheerful. Not really invested in fencing the same way Lucy is. “Unorthodox,” she eventually says.

“I know.” He nods in agreement. “And having you and her be co-captains together is also unorthodox, but it’s what this team needs right now.”

Lucy bites back a snarky response she can feel bubbling up. In her gut, she knows that he’s right. She’s still too new to Stanford to be an effective captain. 

“I understand,” she says. 

She sees Coach Jones blink, as if he wasn’t expecting her to acquiesce so quickly. He doesn’t know that Lucy’s been playing this game - the push and pull political one that comes with leadership positions - for years at this point. 

“Great!” He claps her on the shoulder. “I’ll let Alex know.”

Lucy nods and watches as he walks past her so that he can deliver the news to Alex. Once his back is to her, she sits down heavily on the bench. 

Co-captain. With Alex Danvers. 

She glances over to where Alex is and catches a glimpse of the wide smile that spreads across her face. It makes Lucy’s stomach flip. She looks away and lets her head loll back as she tries to get her emotions under control.

She can handle being co-captain with Alex. 

There’s a whoop from Alex.

Lucy’s hand flexes unconsciously. 

Co-captain. With Alex fucking Danvers.

“Son of a bitch,” Lucy mutters.

-

The Air Force Academy was invited.

That fact somehow escapes Lucy’s notice until she walks into the gym and sees the Air Force team. Once their presence registers with her eyes, Lucy feels herself freeze. They haven’t spotted her, thank god, but that does little to stop Lucy’s heart from trying to pound its way out of her chest. 

“You good, Lane?” 

Lucy startles at the sound of Alex’s voice behind her. She turns to see Alex - her fellow co-captain, a part of her grumbles bitterly - standing behind her with a curious look on her face. 

“I’m fine, Danvers,” Lucy says quickly.

Alex doesn’t look convinced. The expression on her face changes from curious to concerned. It makes Lucy’s stomach twist.

“I’m fine,” Lucy says again, then pulls on her helmet. “I’m gonna go check the match board.”

She hurries off before Alex can say anything else. 

Even though she has her helmet on, Lucy keeps her head down as she makes her way over to the match board. For once, she’s grateful for her smaller stature because it lets her slip under the notice of nearly everyone. Everyone except Siobhan, it would seem. 

“Hey, Luce.”

Luce.

Lucy glances right to see Siobhan approaching. She has an easy smile on her face that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

(Lucy privately wonders if Siobhan’s smiles ever reached her eyes).

“Smith,” she greets curtly. 

“Smith? Ouch, that hurts. And here I thought we were friends, Luce-”

“Don’t call me that,” Lucy snaps before she can stop herself. “You don’t-”

She cuts herself off when she sees Siobhan’s smile twitch, like it wants to widen. It’s the only clue that Lucy has that tells her that she’s about to play right into Siobhan’s hand. 

Siobhan folds her arms and leans back casually, like she doesn’t have a care in the world. She probably doesn’t, now that Lucy thinks about it. Months of reflection have made Lucy realise that Siobhan doesn’t care about anyone other than Siobhan.

“We’re friends,” Siobhan says again.

“No, we aren’t.” Lucy can’t stop the ice that enters her voice. To her satisfaction, she sees Siobhan’s smile drop just a fraction. 

She and Siobhan aren’t friends. They were more than friends and now they aren’t.

“Oh, c’mon, Lucy. Don’t be-”

“Jesus Christ, Lane, it can’t take you that long to check out the roster!”

Lucy may hate Alex Danvers, but right now she’s never been more thankful for the redhead than right now.

There’s a squeak of sneakers against the wooden gym floor before Lucy feels Alex throw an arm around her shoulder. Lucy forces herself to stay relaxed even though every instinct she has is telling her to throw Alex’s arm off her shoulder. 

“I’m serious,” Alex continues. “You’ve been over here for forever. Coach was wondering if you’d gotten lost or-”

Siobhan pointedly clears her throat. She still has that smile on her face - the one that’s polite and sweet whilst not quite reaching her eyes - but her eyes have grown a shade darker. Alex’s presence is annoying the fuck out of Siobhan and Lucy can’t find it in herself to feel apologetic.

“Oh, sorry,” Alex says, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “Alex Danvers, co-captain of the Cardinals fencing team with Lucy here. And you are?”

Siobhan’s eyes darken even further. Whether it’s because of Alex’s laid back attitude or her question, Lucy doesn’t know, but it’s enough to have her shifting her body ever so slightly so that she’s providing cover for Alex. She remembers how vicious Siobhan can get when she’s pissed.

“Siobhan Smith, Air Force Academy,” she says.

“Huh. Cool.” Lucy chokes back a laugh at how easily Alex brushes Siobhan’s introduction aside. “Well, it was nice meeting you, but Lucy and I have to go now to take care of some captain-related things before the matches start up.”

“Of course.” The smile that she gives the two of them is so fake that for a second, Lucy’s afraid that Siobhan’s face will get stuck like that. “It was nice seeing you again, Lucy.”

Lucy hums noncommittally rather than give a verbal response.

She knows she’s managed to turn the situation back around on Siobhan when a scowl flickers across the Air Force cadet’s face. It doesn’t last long, but Lucy enjoys the sight nonetheless. 

Siobhan does an about face that’s so sloppy that Lucy has to fight the urge to wince. She still has standards even if the military isn’t in her cards anymore.

“So,” Alex draws out once Siobhan is out of earshot, “what’s the story between you and her?”

Lucy shoves Alex’s arm off her shoulder. “There isn’t one.”

Not anymore.

“Uh huh, sure, Lane.” 

“There isn’t one, Danvers,” Lucy says again. “And even if there was, I wouldn’t share it with you.”

She would sooner share it with Lois than she would with Alex.

“Geez, that’s kind of harsh, don’t you think?”

“Nope.”

-

The Cardinals crush the Western Invitational.

Lucy goes 9-0 and ends the day with a flawless Hungarian parry. 

She’s shaking hands with her opponent, a girl from Incarnate Word who had a really rough run today, when she hears a whoop. She looks left to see Alex and Siobhan pulling their helmets off, revealing a wide grin on Alex’s face and a furious look on Siobhan’s face. 

The score machine is 5-4, in Alex’s favour.

Lucy sighs and gives her opponent an apologetic look. “Sorry, I’ll go handle that.”

She pulls away and makes it about two steps when she sees it: Siobhan’s hand twitch. 

Lucy’s heart flies into her throat. She’s fenced against Siobhan enough times to know what her tells mean, knows the woman well enough to remember how she reacts when she loses. Siobhan is pissed, that much is obvious, and she’s about to take it out on Alex. Alex, who just turned her back to Siobhan to talk to the referee. Alex, who doesn’t have her helmet on. Alex, whose head and neck are exposed.

“Move!” she shouts.

She ignores the cries of shock that ring out as she flunges towards Alex and Siobhan, saber outstretched. She doesn’t breathe whilst she moves. She’s completely focused on getting there before Siobhan’s saber can connect with Alex’s unprotected back.

The sensation of her saber’s bell guard jamming up against Siobhan’s is jarring. It’s only years of practice that allow Lucy to keep a firm grip on her saber even as every nerve in her aches in protest. 

Siobhan isn’t so lucky. Her grip loosens for half of a second. It’s the only opening Lucy needs to twist her saber and send Siobhan’s flying.

Siobhan’s saber clatters against the floor, the sound echoing throughout the now silent gym. Lucy pays it little attention because she’s too busy turning and shoving Siobhan back.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she demands. “Your match was over! Her back was to you!”

Siobhan’s face is red - from embarrassment or anger or some combination of the two, Lucy can’t tell nor does she care - and her jaw is clenched shut. She tilts her chin upwards, as if to tell Lucy that she’s not going to give her an answer but Lucy’s having none of it. 

Lucy moves to shove Siobhan again. She barely has a chance to bring her hand up before she’s stopped by a combination of Alex’s hand wrapping around her arm and a referee getting in-between her and Siobhan. Lucy tenses, ready to yank her arm out of Alex’s grip. The only reason she doesn’t is because she sees the referee pull a black card from her jacket.

Lucy’s breath catches in her throat at the sight. She’s never seen a black card pulled during any tournament she’s participated in in the past, but she knows what it means. She’s about to get kicked out of the tournament and lose the captaincy and-

The card is waved in Siobhan’s direction. “Black card, Siobhan Smith!” the referee announces. “Issued for unsportsmanlike behaviour and dangerous conduct!”

There’s a collective gasp from everyone save Siobhan, who lets out an outraged sound at the ruling. 

The referee isn’t finished. She reaches into her coat again and pulls out another card. It’s yellow and this time, it’s waved in Lucy’s direction.

“Yellow card, Lucy Lane! Issued for illegal exit of the piste!”

Lucy nods even as her teammates start shouting their objections. It’s a fair ruling. 

“That’s bullshit!” She hears Alex explode behind her. “What the fuck is-”

Lucy pushes Alex back with her free hand before the redhead can get up in the referee’s face. A part of her appreciates the fiery defence, but she can support herself. 

“Danvers, it’s a fair call,” she says before Alex can continue. “Now shut up before that black card gets tossed your way.”

That shuts Alex up. The black card in question is still on full display in the referee’s hand; she’s talking to the Air Force Academy’s coach now while the rest of the Falcons have practically dragged Siobhan off the piste and towards their bench. 

“Yeah, okay.” Lucy glances over her shoulder when she hears Alex take a deep breath. “Thanks.”

Lucy raises an eyebrow. “For what?”

“For not letting Siobhan run me through. I mean, her saber was capped but still,” Alex shrugs, “that could’ve gotten messy without you.”

The smile that Alex gives her is warm and genuine. It sends Lucy’s stomach fluttering for the umpteenth time that day. She has to fight the urge to pull her helmet back on because the day is over and she has no good explanation for why she would be wearing it now. 

Lucy returns the shrug, trying to keep it as casual as she can. “Don’t mention it,” she says. “It was nothing.”

Alex laughs. “Nothing? Lane, Lucy, you had to have flunged like more than 15 meters and followed it up with a disarm from a perpendicular angle all before I could turn around or get my helmet back on,” she points out. “That’s not nothing, that’s pure awesomeness right there!”

Lucy can feel her cheeks heating up at Alex’s praise. Alex sounds so earnest, like she actually means what she’s saying. Between that and her encounter with Siobhan earlier, Lucy feels so off-kilter. 

She hates feeling off-kilter.

Lucy moves her saber so that it’s in her left hand. “I didn’t do it for you,” she mutters. 

“Yeah, well, thank you.” Lucy does her best to not flinch when Alex’s hand goes and squeezes her shoulder. “You’re pretty awesome, Lucy.”

No, she’s not. If she were as awesome as Alex thinks she is, then she would be the captain instead of sharing the captaincy with Alex. If she were as awesome as Alex thinks she is, then she would still be at West Point. 

Lucy looks away. She can’t stand the warmth in Alex’s eyes and voice any longer. 

“I’m gonna go check in with Coach,” Lucy says quickly. 

“I’ll come with-”

She cuts Alex off, “I’m checking in about my yellow card, Danvers. I don’t need you there for that.”

There’s a flash of something that crosses Alex’s face. Lucy tries not to pay too much attention to it, instead deciding to hurry off before Alex can say anything else. 

Lucy keeps her head up as she walks towards Stanford’s bench. If she feels off-balance, it’s because the adrenaline in her system is finally bleeding away.

(It’s not because of how warm Alex Danvers’ voice is, or because of how her smile reached her eyes the entire time she was talking to Lucy. Definitely not. She and Alex aren’t friends. Alex Danvers is a good fencer, but she’s undisciplined, loud, and everything Lucy isn’t).

Out of the corner of her eye, Lucy spots Max near the Air Force bench talking to Siobhan. Her teammate is the perfect picture of sympathy. It makes Lucy frown because if there’s one thing that Maxwell Lord is not, it’s sympathetic. Her frown grows even deeper when she notices the look on Siobhan’s face. It’s one that she’s familiar with, one that used to make butterflies go mad in her stomach because she thought it was for her.

(Lucy knows now it was never for her).

That look still makes her stomach turn but it’s not because of love or jealousy. It’s because she knows the kind of person Siobhan is now and that look? That look means that she’s up to no good. It means that Siobhan has something planned and Max is about to become a part of that plan, though whether as a victim or a pawn that thinks it’s the king, Lucy doesn’t know. She doesn’t know which idea unsettles her more.

Lucy doesn’t get a chance to dwell on it for long because she hears Coach Jones calling her name. 

She pretends she can’t feel three sets of eyes burning against her back.

-

Lucy does her best to push Siobhan out of her mind after the tournament. She has bigger things to focus on - like the stats class where she sits at number two or the fact that she and Alex are still co-captains because Coach Jones hasn’t decided which one of them he prefers.

She’s almost completely forgotten about their encounter at the Western Invitational until practice a few weeks later, when Max slides up next to her with a dangerous smile on his face.

“I heard a really interesting rumour about you, Lane,” Max drawls.

“Yeah?” Lucy asks, not really paying attention to him. She never really does pay attention to him because he’s always been more bark than bite and it shows in his bladework. 

“Yup!” The cheerful tone he has makes Lucy raise an eyebrow. She still doesn’t look at him; she’s too occupied by her manchette. “Rumour on the circuit is that you didn’t actually transfer because Stanford gave you a better offer-”

Lucy freezes.

“You had to transfer because your old school didn’t want you. Because you’re a dyke,” he says loudly.

The gym goes silent.

Lucy stops breathing.

Her sexuality is something she’s kept close to her chest since she left West Point. She’s been careful to not reveal her preferences one way or another because the memory of Siobhan and the Commandant’s office is still so raw.

(If she’s being honest, she doesn't have a preference. She loves either sex equally and deeply).

Lucy knows that she should react, that she should say something in her own defence. But she can’t. She can’t get the words out because they’re stuck in her throat and she can’t breathe. She can’t breathe. Max still has that smug smile on his face and Lucy can feel the eyes of their teammates on her and she can’t breathe she can’t breathe she can’t-

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” A furious shout breaks the silence. 

Alex comes storming up. The expression on her face makes Lucy think about the fires that supposedly created the jinn. It’s intense enough to wipe the smile off of Max’s face almost immediately and make the rest of their teammates flinch.

“C’mon, Danvers, Lane’s one of our captains. As a team, we have a right to know if the rumour is true or not,” he says. “You know, just to make sure she’s not-”

He’s cut off by Alex fisting his jacket and dragging him close. 

“Finish that sentence and I’ll see you benched for the rest of the season.” Alex’s tone is deadly. It sends the hairs on the back of Lucy’s neck standing on end. “Hell, I’ll make sure you never fucking fence ever again.”

Max tries for a smile, as if to try and brush off the fear that Alex’s words have obviously instilled in him. It doesn’t last long, not when Alex’s grip tightens so hard that Lucy can hear the kevlar creak in protest.

“It’s just a rumour,” he says again as if it’s a legitimate defence. “If it’s not true, all Lane has to do is say so.”

He makes it sound so easy when it’s anything but. Siobhan had made it look so easy but Lucy’s not her. She can’t say anything, can’t deny his accusation because-

(Because a cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those that do).

Because that’s not her. 

“She doesn’t have to say a goddamn thing,” Alex snarls. “She’s your fucking captain, same as me.”

Lucy says nothing. She just looks at Alex and takes in the incandescent fury on her fellow co-captain’s face, takes in the harsh rasp that Alex’s voice has adopted, takes in the way Alex’s nostrils flare with rage that’s aimed only at Max. 

She takes it all in. Then, she takes a step back, followed by another. 

On her third step back, her fencing sneakers squeak against the wood floor, catching Alex’s attention.

“Lucy?” Alex glances back.

Her eyes are still blazing, but they soften when they find Lucy. Somehow, that softness scares Lucy more than Max outing her. So, she does the only thing she can. 

She runs. 

-

Lucy knows that she makes for an odd sight. 

Her white fencing uniform sticks out like a sore thumb against the sand of the Gray Whale Cove beach. That, combined with the prayer rug under her arm, means that she gets plenty of stares as she makes her way down the gravel path to the beach proper.

She sets up at the far end of the beach, away from the obvious tourists and handful of locals. She doesn’t want to be bothered. She hopes that her distance and the appearance of the prayer rug will be enough to keep others away.

(Her prayer rug hasn’t seen use in months, not since she left West Point. Even back then, she only ever brought it out when she found herself awake before her roommate).

Muscle memory guides Lucy. The turbah tucked into the folds of the rug is placed at the top, shoes get kicked off, her manchette is pulled off and dropped next to them, and her knees meet the bottom edge of the rug without much thought. It’s only when the sound of waves crashing against the shore registers with Lucy’s ears, does she actually pause. 

A part of Lucy supposes she could go into the ocean and do wudu there, but she knows that if she gets up and walk over to the water, she’s not going to come back and pray; she’ll break down as soon as her feet touch the water. It doesn’t help that her socks are currently tucked into her breeches which means they won’t come off easily and if there’s one thing Lucy detests, it’s wet socks. Besides, there’s plenty of sand around her that she can use for tayammum.

Lucy fists the sand then lets it run through her fingers, before bringing her hands to her face. She rubs her face for a few moments, then rubs her hands together one last time. Once finished, she pushes herself to her feet with a grunt.

Lucy watches the waves come in. She doesn’t really know where to start. It’s too late for Asr, but also too early for Maghrib. Even if it were the right time, she knows she’s not in the right headspace to offer a full eight rakats. 

Lucy closes her eyes and raises her hands. Her head may be all over the place, but she can focus just enough to offer a dua. She knows exactly which one she wants to offer too.

“Allahu akbar,” she whispers and lets her hands fall back to her side. “Bismillah iramah iraheem…”

In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful

She bows, then kneels, pressing her forehead against the turbah. “Ilahi `azuma albala'u.”

Oh, my God, my ordeal has become immeasurable

“Wankashafa alghita'u…”

The covered has been disclosed

Lucy swallows back a lump that rises in her throat. She knows it wants to turn into a sob but she won’t let it. She’s already shed enough tears over everything. More won’t change the fact that she’s lost almost everything once just because of who she loves, and that she’s very likely about to lose everything again thanks to Max. 

Lucy’s eyes snap open when she hears something thump in front of her. She sits back to see a gym bag placed in front of her.

“Sorry!” She looks up and to her right to see Alex standing there, hand outstretched. “I just, I read a thing where you’re not supposed to step in front of a Muslim who’s praying, but that if they have like a barrier in front of them then their prayers won’t get disrupted and I wanted-”

Lucy isn’t sure if she’s ever seen Alex look so flustered. It’s different, kind of cute even.

“Danvers, it’s fine,” she cuts in, stopping Alex’s rambling in its tracks. “Thanks. I was just about finished anyway.”

That last part is a lie, but Alex doesn’t need to know that.

“Oh. Right, okay.”

Lucy shifts so that she’s sitting on her butt instead of her knees. A few seconds later, Alex sits down next to her. To Lucy’s surprise, Alex doesn’t say anything else. She just sits there silently, almost like she’s waiting for Lucy to make the next move.

Lucy looks back towards the ocean. “How’d you find me?”

“I, ah, I had Vasquez track your phone,” Alex admits. “They spoofed the Find My iPhone app or something.”

Lucy raises an eyebrow at that. She glances at Alex to see the redhead’s cheeks turning pink. “That’s illegal, Danvers.”

Alex’s cheeks turn darker. “I know,” she whines. “But it-it was for a good cause. I was worried.”

“About me.”

If Alex’s cheeks get any redder, Lucy swears she could use them to light a fire.

“Yeah.”

Lucy finds her stomach flipping at Alex’s admission. She coughs and looks away to hide the fact that she can feel her own cheeks starting to heat up.

“Well, you can see that I’m fine, Danvers,” she says.

“Are you really, though?”

Lucy shrugs, still not looking at Alex. “It’s not the first time I’ve been outed.”

“What.”

The unexpected flatness that Alex’s tone takes makes Lucy flinch. She’s never heard Alex sound like that before.

“Nothing,” she rushes out. “It’s nothing.”

“No, it’s not.” Lucy jumps when Alex’s hand lands on her shoulder. “Getting outed isn’t _nothing_. You’re telling me that this has happened before?”

Lucy shakes her head. “I didn’t-” she tries to deny, but Alex is clearly having none of it.

She moves so that she’s in front of Lucy. Lucy does her best to not look at Alex because she knows that if she does, she’s probably going to break. 

“Lucy, ho-Luce.” Alex places a hand on Lucy’s face. Her touch is gentle. It doesn’t push like Siobhan’s did, it encourages whilst leaving the ball entirely in Lucy’s court. Lucy’s not sure if the butterflies that rise up in her stomach are because of the touch or because Alex called her ‘Luce.’ “What happened?”

Lucy wants to say nothing. She wants to tell Alex to fuck off, that it’s none of her goddamn business, but she can’t. She can’t because there’s no judgement in Alex’s eyes, only concern and something else that Lucy can’t place. 

Lucy licks her lips. “It’s not a rumour,” she finally mutters.

Alex’s brow furrows in confusion. “What?”

“What Max said back at practice, about the real reason I transferred,” Lucy clarifies. “I didn’t transfer because Stanford gave me a better offer. I transferred because I got kicked out. Of West Point.”

“West Point. Like…”

Lucy nods. “Like the military academy, like the Air Force Academy only better,” she tries to joke but it falls flat. 

Understanding dawns on Alex’s face. “So that’s how you know Siobhan.”

“Yeah.” Lucy swallows. “We met at the Penn Elite Invitational my plebe year and she was…”

Incredible. Breathtaking. Striking. 

“Amazing,” she eventually says. “She’s amazing. Was amazing. She’s a great fencer and just had this presence that commands attention, you know? I think that’s what drew me to her.”

“You sound like you really like her.”

If Lucy didn’t know any better, she would say that Alex sounds jealous. That’s ridiculous though, because she and Alex aren’t friends and besides, Alex isn’t gay. She just feels sorry for Lucy. It’s why this is probably the longest conversation the two of them have had outside of practice.

Lucy smiles sadly. “I did,” she says quietly. “She gave me her number after the invitational and we kept in touch. Before I knew it, I was in love with her and I thought, I thought it was mutual. It seemed that way.”

Because Siobhan had known all the right things to say. Because Lucy hadn’t been able to believe that anyone would love her for her instead of her name. Because she had been scared, and Siobhan had made herself look like she was going to be a safe harbour for Lucy.

“But it wasn’t?”

Lucy lets out a laugh that sounds fake even to her own ears. “No, it wasn’t,” she confirms. “I thought she loved me back, but Siobhan only loves herself. She didn’t care about me. When we got caught, it was because of a random mail inspection-”

“Mail inspection? That can’t be legal!”

Another shrug from Lucy. “It’s a military school on a military base, Danvers,” she points out. “It’s legal because there’s a precedent on other bases.”

“Nerd.” From the way Alex’s eyes seem to crinkle at the edges, Lucy knows that Alex is trying to lighten what is otherwise a horrible situation. 

It kind of works. Lucy feels her lips twitch into something that she’s sure resembles a slightly happier smile. It doesn’t last long, but the way Alex’s eyes light up make Lucy feel a bit better.

Lucy shoves Alex’s shoulder. “Shut up, Danvers,” she says without any real heat. 

“Alright, alright, sorry.” Alex holds her hands up. “So the mail inspection got you kicked out?”

Lucy shakes her head. “No, it just got the ball rolling. There had been rumours going around for a while, I guess, but they never made it to the commandant until one of my letters to Siobhan was intercepted. Once that happened, I got called up and…”

_We’ve heard some rumours flying around, Cadet Lane. Are they true?_

_I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those that do._

_Cadet Lane, I advise that you think very, very hard about what you are going to say next._

_I’m done lying._

“And that was that.”

“But Siobhan’s still at the Air Force Academy,” Alex says, confusion evident in her tone. 

“Yeah, she’s there because I didn’t keep any of the letters she sent me. I always shredded them or burned them. Siobhan, though?” Lucy chuckles darkly. “I found out later that she kept mine and when they called her in, she made it seem like it was a one-sided thing. Made it seem like I was the one pursuing her. Told them that _I_ was the gay one, not her.”

“She threw you under the bus,” Alex murmurs. “She outed you and threw you under the bus to save her own skin. That fucking bitch!”

Alex’s reaction takes Lucy aback. She didn’t expect her fellow co-captain to be this enraged. 

“It was my own fault,” Lucy tries to say. “It was my letter and I should’ve realised sooner that things with Siobhan weren’t-”

Alex cuts her off, “Lucy, you loved her. It might’ve been your letter, but you trusted her and she, she fucking stabbed you in the back!”

Lucy knows that. It’s taken her a few months, but she knows that now. She doesn’t understand why Alex is so angry.

“Why are you so upset about this, Danvers?” she asks.

“Why aren’t you?” Alex fires back. “Siobhan threw you under the bus and got off pretty much scott free from the sound of it, while you-”

“Lost everything!” Lucy snaps. “I lost everything, Danvers: my career before it even started, my friends, my family, and there’s nothing I can do about it! I can’t do anything. I can’t reapply to a different service academy because I’m banned from serving in the military now!”

“Lucy…”

“I’m over it. I’ve been over it for a while now,” she lies. 

(She’s definitely not over it).

“That chip on your shoulder says otherwise.”

Lucy scowls. “Fuck you.”

“I wish you would.”

Lucy freezes, and so does Alex. They stare at each other. Alex looks mortified while Lucy feels like her heart is about to beat right out of her chest.

Lucy is the one who recovers first. “I don’t fuck straight girls,” she spits, breaking the silence. “I literally just told you that, Danvers. Didn’t work out so well for me, remember?”

Fuck Alex Danvers and her warm eyes that Lucy feels like she’s drowning in. Fuck Alex Danvers and the way that she bites her lip when she thinks. Fuck Alex Danvers and her smile that reaches her eyes in the way that Siobhan’s never did. 

“I’m not.”

Lucy blinks. That’s not the reaction she expected from Alex.

“Straight, I mean,” Alex clarifies. “I’m not straight. I’m gay.”

“Oh.”

She doesn’t miss the way Alex winces. It’s a wince that Lucy shares with her. Of all things she could have said, it had to be ‘oh.’

“Yeah.” Alex coughs and looks away.

“Is that the real reason behind why you came after me?” Lucy asks. “You being gay, not the other thing.”

She can’t say it out loud. Saying out loud makes it real, makes what she’s feeling real and she can’t let that happen. She doesn’t do friends or lovers or fuckbuddies or whatever the hell Alex likely wants. 

“I came after you because I get it. Kind of.” Alex sighs and runs a hand through her hair. “I got outed in high school by my lab partner. I didn’t lose everything like you did, my mom’s okay with it and I didn’t get kicked out of school, but it-it was still a mess. I wasn’t ready to be out, you know?”

Lucy nods. She does know. She hadn’t been ready to be out in the commandant’s office; she’d barely been out to herself before that point.

“So when Max said what he said and you reacted the way that you did, I thought, I thought that was why. That you hadn’t been ready for the world to know and he’d taken that choice away from you.”

He did. If Lucy had her way, no one else would know. She didn’t want other people to know. Not because she was ashamed, but because she was scared. She had already lost everything once. She wasn’t ready to lose it all again a second time.

“I’m not,” Lucy whispers. “I’m out to me and I guess to West Point, but I don’t, I can’t, I’m not ready for anyone else here to know. I wasn’t ready.”

Stanford was supposed to be her new start, a place where people only knew her for her fencing, not because she’s the idiot who got involved with a woman who only cared about herself and only saw Lucy as a means to an end. 

Somehow, Alex must have picked up on her thoughts because the next thing Lucy knows, Alex places a hand on her knee.

“The team isn’t going to say anything,” she says.

Lucy scoffs. “You can’t promise that, Danvers.”

Alex grins. “We’re co-captains, Lucy. They’ll do whatever we tell them to do.” A thoughtful look crosses Alex’s face. “Well, they’re more likely to do whatever you tell them because I think they’re a little afraid of you.”

Lucy doesn’t think she’s that scary. She tells Alex that much.

“You’re not scary,” Alex agrees. “You’re...intimidating. I mean, you’re this amazing fencer who posts clean sheet after clean sheet, who can do Hungarian parries like they’re nothing, who’s smart and beautiful and always seems to be a step ahead of-”

“Okay, okay, you’ve made your point!” Lucy interrupts.

Her cheeks feel like they’re on fire. It’s like the Western Invitational all over again. Alex is gushing, like Siobhan had done all those years ago when they met at the Penn Elite Invitation. Unlike Siobhan though, it’s obvious that Alex means every word she says. 

“The intimidation factor doesn’t seem to have stopped Max,” she mutters bitterly.

Lucy sees Alex’s eyes darken. It’s another difference between Alex and Siobhan - their eyes. Siobhan’s would darken with anger whenever something wasn’t going her way. Alex’s though? The rage in hers is directed squarely at Max even though he’s nowhere near the beach that the two of them are on. 

“He’s been dealt with,” Alex says.

Lucy’s eyebrows go up at that. “That sounds ominous.”

“Coach is benching him for the foreseeable future.” 

Lucy feels her stomach drop. She completely forgot about Coach Jones. 

“Does he know?” she asks.

Alex shakes her head. “No. I told him that Max had said something homophobic to me.” Lucy blinks and Alex laughs. “Yeah, he already knows I’m gay, so he believed me. Max wants to keep fencing, so he didn’t bother to say otherwise.”

Lucy softens. “Alex…”

It slips out without Lucy meaning it to. She finds that she doesn’t care too much, not when Alex’s eyes widen the way that they do and a massive grin breaks out across her face. Alex looks over the moon. It’s a look that Lucy enjoys seeing.

(Not that she’ll admit it out loud).

“That’s the first time you’ve said my name,” Alex says, grinning.

Lucy rolls her eyes. “I say your name plenty, _Danvers,_ ” she retorts. 

Alex pouts and Lucy almost melts at the sight because goddamn, Alex Danvers has no right to look that fucking cute.

“That doesn’t sound nearly as nice as my first name coming from your mouth,” Alex says.

Lucy feels like her cheeks have barely had the chance to cool down before they’re flaring right back up again. She reaches out and shoves Alex back into the sand. 

Alex yelps as she lands flat on her back. “That was rude,” she groans.

Lucy can’t help it. She starts laughing. It’s not long before Alex joins her.

Eventually, their laughter dies down. Lucy has to wipe tears of mirth out of her eyes whilst Alex pushes herself up into a sitting position. A beat later, Alex is sitting next to Lucy instead of in front of her.

“So,” Alex draws out, “now what? You’ve got your evening prayers to do, right? I can go and-”

Lucy shakes her head. “I have to wait until after the sun goes down for Maghrib,” she says. 

“Okay.” Out of the corner of her eye, Lucy sees Alex biting her lip. “Mind if I stick around for a bit then? We can watch the sunset together.”

Lucy knows that she should say no. She should tell Alex to go back to campus because she knows that Alex has an 8AM ochem lab. She should tell Alex no because she’s already spent so much time here, she doesn’t need to waste any more on Lucy. 

Lucy should say no, and yet-

“...I’d like that.”

“Cool.” Alex wraps an arm around Lucy’s shoulders. Her touch is light, as if to give Lucy the option to accept or deny the move. 

Lucy doesn’t shove Alex’s arm off her shoulders. Instead, she leans into the embrace.

“If you want something to cover your hair for your evening prayer, I have a tallit in my bag,” Alex mentions. “It’s a shawl style, so it should work as a hijab in a pinch. I hope.”

Lucy feels her heart swell. She’s never had a teammate offer something like that. “I think I’m gonna take you up on that.”

The two of them sit in silence as they watch the sun finally start to set. Lucy unconsciously shifts closer to Alex as the sky’s colours start to change from blue to a fiery orange. Alex’s grip tightens around Lucy, making Lucy freeze. 

“Hey, Luce?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got your back. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. I know.” A beat. “Thanks, Alex.”

“Anytime, Luce.”

-

For the first time in her life, Lucy feels lighter.

She and Alex don’t talk about what happens on the beach. Their shared silence on the matter should be awkward, but it isn’t. If anything, they work smoother than they did before. 

Lucy finds herself hating Alex less and enjoying her company before and after practice a bit more. She enjoys the way Alex laughs after telling a truly terrible dad joke, enjoys the way Alex smiles whenever one of the younger members of the team scores. 

(She especially enjoys the way that Alex calls her ‘Luce’ more often than Lucy).

The only real source of tension on the team is Max.

He’s as insufferable as ever, benched as he is. He makes snide comments about Lucy under his breath whenever he’s near her. Lucy, for her part, just gives him a politically sweet smile and tells him that if he spent as much time improving his footwork as he did insulting her, he might actually place at a tournament. It shuts him up and draws laughter from Alex.

(She doesn’t tell Alex about Max’s comments because the last thing she needs is for her co-captain (and maybe friend) to run the arrogant sophomore through with her saber the weekend before the NCAA championships). 

The tension is really only one-sided; even though Max outed her, Lucy doesn’t care enough about him to entertain the pissing contest he so obviously wants. She has bigger things to worry about, like the NCAA championships.

Unfortunately, tension is tension and it’s the last thing that the team needs before a major tournament. Lucy might not be affected by it, but Max is and while he’s far from the top fencer on the team, he can at at least score consistently. That’s the only reason that Coach Jones decides to have the two of them fence it out at practice.

Alex is the first one that protests. “Coach, c’mon! I need Lucy to fence with me so I can get the Hungarian parry down!”

It’s a lie and Lucy’s fairly certain the entire team, save for Max, knows it. She’s fairly certain that Coach Jones knows it’s a lie too, because she knows that he saw Alex pull it off perfectly after practice a week ago.

“Every point is going to matter at the championships, Alex,” he says. “I need all of my fencers at the top of their game before then.”

“But-”

“Alex, it’s fine,” Lucy interrupts, not unkindly. “It’s just gonna be a quick practice match, right Coach?”

Coach Jones nods. “One round.”

Lucy looks back to Alex. “One round, then I can help you with that parry. God knows you need it,” she teases.

She watches Alex roll her eyes playfully. “Oh, fine.”

Coach Jones nods and walks over to Max, most likely to tell him that he’s going to be sparring against Lucy within the next several minutes. Once he’s out of earshot, Alex slides up close to Lucy. 

“Okay, I know I just said it was fine, but Luce, I have a bad feeling about this,” she whispers.

Lucy has to fight back a shiver that rises due to Alex’s proximity. The redhead is pressed against her.

“Alex, it’ll be fine. You and I both know that Max’s bark is worse than his bite. He won’t be able to get a touch on me.”

(None of their teammates so much as bat an eyelash at her calling Alex by her first name instead of ‘Danvers.’ If anything, it makes them all breathe a sigh of relief that their captains are getting along and that Lucy seems less likely to want to stab Alex with her saber).

Alex exhales. “I’m gonna hold you to that.” She lightly thumps Lucy in the shoulder. “Can’t have my fellow co-captain getting beat in a practice bout right before the championships.”

Lucy rolls her eyes. Her, get beat by Maxwell Lord? Like hell.

“Lucy, are you ready?”

Lucy grabs her helmet and pulls it on. “Ready, Coach.”

She makes her way over to the mats. To her surprise, Max doesn’t say anything when she steps in front of him. His eyes narrow at the sight of her, but otherwise, there’s no reaction from him.

“This is a practice bout, but treat it like a real match,” Coach Jones says. “Understood?”

Lucy nods. “Roger that.”

“Got it.”

“On guard,” Coach Jones announces.

Lucy takes her stance.

“Are you ready?”

Lucy takes a breath.

“Fence!”

Max makes the first move. 

It startles Lucy, because whenever they fence, Max rarely if ever makes the first move. He prefers to rely on parries and ripostes for his points. 

Lucy makes the first parry. Almost immediately, she can tell that there’s something off about Max’s saber. Lucy doesn’t know what it is, but she can feel it. His hits are sharper, colder, like he cares less about trying for a point and more about making sure she hurts.

Lucy retreats to try and buy herself a millisecond to breathe and figure out what the hell is going on. 

One step back.

Another step back.

Max’s saber flashes again and that’s when Lucy sees it: the saber is uncapped. 

Max’s saber is _uncapped_.

She doesn’t know how he started the practice bout without anyone noticing. She doesn’t know how it slipped by _her_. 

Lucy goes to parry again but she’s half a second too slow. The tip of Max’s saber connects with her vest. The saber bends like it always does and for a moment, Lucy thinks that she saw everything wrong, that his saber is actually capped and she’s going to be fine.

Then the saber keeps going.

Lucy knows it keeps going because she can feel it. The force behind his attack knocks the wind out of her and sends her stumbling back. She tries to bring her saber up to parry or riposte or do _something_ , anything to get Max’s saber away from her. Her arms refuse to respond though, because she can’t focus on anything other than the saber being run through her.

There’s a smug, victorious look on Max’s face that’s visible even through his helmet. It makes Lucy want to throw her saber down and punch him but she can’t. She can’t, because her brain can’t believe this is actually happening. This is a practice bout. This kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen during a practice bout. Bruises are supposed to be the worst thing that happens, not a teammate trying to kill you.

And Max, Lucy realises, is trying to kill her. He’s going to kill her, because the saber hasn’t stopped moving and her chest is on fire and she can’t breathe.

Lucy can hear screaming. She doesn’t know where it’s coming from it; it’s definitely not her because she can’t get enough air into her lungs to do anything other than choke.

A white blur slams into Max, sending him to the ground with a bone jarring thud.

Lucy watches Alex’s fist slam into Max’s chest and then his helmet. From the way Max’s body lurches at the first blow, she can tell that Alex has knocked out what little wind remains in his lungs. The second blow dents the mesh face grid and Lucy knows that if Max hadn’t been wearing his helmet, Alex would have just broken his jaw.

Lucy is still standing, somehow. She thinks it’s a combination of shock and adrenaline that keeps her up. Then, Alex looks back and all Lucy sees in her eyes is fear. Somehow that hurts worse than the saber in her chest and it’s enough to have Lucy taking one shaky step back, then another before she trips over nothing and ends up on the ground.

Her back so rarely ever touches the mats during practice that Lucy finds the sensation jarring. It leaves her gasping. 

Suddenly, Alex is standing over her. Her lips are moving but Lucy can’t hear a word that she’s saying because the blood pounding her ears is deafening. All Lucy can do is focus on Alex’s face to try and keep herself grounded. 

It doesn’t work. 

Lucy can feel her energy slipping away as everyone rushes around her. With each bit of energy that slips away, sound seems to come back. She can vaguely hear Alex shouting orders, can hear someone yelling for paramedics, can hear her own heart pounding beneath her ribs. 

Lucy tries to close her eyes to rest in order to preserve some of her energy. She barely has a chance to have them flutter shut before she feels rough, calloused hands on her face. She opens them back up to see Alex. The redhead is still over her, but she’s kneeling now.

 _“Keep them open!”_ Even though Alex is right in front of her, she sounds so far away.

Lucy does her best but it’s hard when her chest is on fire and she feels like she’s drowning. Maybe she is, drowning that is. Drowning in Alex’s eyes, drowning in her own blood. The latter hurts like a bitch, but the former? The former Lucy figures she could do forever. God knows that she’s been drowning because of Alex since she transferred to Stanford.

There’s a part of Lucy that thinks Lois would find the whole thing hilarious. Here she is about to die and all Lucy can do is wax philosophically about a pretty girl. 

Lucy tries to choke something out to Alex, tries to assure her that she’s fine, tries to lie and joke and say that she’s had worse. But she can’t. It takes effort and energy that Lucy doesn’t have. 

Alex’s grip on her face tightens in a way that feels desperate to Lucy. If Lucy had anything left in her system, she figures it would be enough to keep her from teetering into oblivion. She doesn’t, though. 

Despite her best efforts, Lucy’s eyes slip shut.

The last thing she hears is Alex screaming.

-

The first thing Lucy thinks when she finally comes to is that she wants a refund.

She’s no religious scholar, but she’s fairly certain she’s not supposed to hurt in Jannah. She also doubts it’s supposed to smell sterile. She knows that she’s not the best Muslim - she misses Fajr prayer more times than she cares to count and she did have a BLT sandwich two weeks ago (although, she’s more than willing to argue that it was a honest mistake to the angels). Still, Lucy figures that Jannah is supposed to be better than this.

Lucy cracks an eye open to see Lois sitting in a chair in the corner of what she can only assume is a hospital room.

“Fuck,” she manages to croak out.

Okay, so maybe she isn’t in Jannah at all. Maybe that BLT sandwich earned her a spot in Jahannam. 

There’s a creak from the corner that tells Lucy that Lois is up and awake.

“Alhamdulillah, you’re awake!” She hears Lois say. It makes Lucy feel a little guilty; her sister only ever falls back on exclamations like that when she’s truly worried.

“Kinda wishing I wasn’t. Shit hurts,” she grumbles. 

She has to blink a few more times to refocus on Lois. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“That’s a joke, right?”

Lucy drums her the fingers of her right hand against the bed because her left side seems heavier than normal. 

“I haven’t been the best at keeping in touch since, well, everything,” she points out.

That was just another thing to feel guilty about. Lois had given her a place to stay after she got kicked out of West Point, and had called in a few favours to get Lucy into Stanford. How had Lucy thanked her sister? By completely ghosting her. 

“It happens,” Lois says.

“I guess.” Lucy absently tries to move her left hand, only to frown when it barely moves. She looks down to see a mess of red hair and-

Alex. 

It’s Alex.

She’s fast asleep and still dressed in her fencing uniform, sans jacket and sous-plastron. She looks like she’s been there for a while.

“She was already there when I got here,” Lois mentions quietly. “I don’t think she’s left your side the entire time, other than when they took you in for surgery.”

Lucy slowly reaches over with her free hand and brushes hair out of Alex’s face. The touch makes Alex’s face scrunch up adorably. 

“Sleeping like this can’t be comfortable for her,” Lucy muses.

“Probably not,” Lois agrees, “but I don’t think she cares.”

Lucy raises an eyebrow at her sister. “Yeah?”

She doesn’t miss the way Lois’s eyes roll at her question. 

“Lucy, when I got here, your teammates were a mess but her? She looked like someone had taken her heart out and stomped on it,” Lois says. “She didn’t say a word other than hi until the surgeons came out to say you would be fine. After that, she was barking out orders to the rest of the team and told them that she was staying with you.”

Lucy can feel her lips twitch into a fond smile as she looks down at Alex. She runs a hand through Alex’s hair. 

“Yeah, that sounds like Alex.”

“Oooh, you’re on a first name basis. Sounds like there’s a story there!”

Lucy’s smile turns into a scowl. “Oh, fuck off. Find your own damn story elsewhere!”

Lois laughs. “You know, the drugs are supposed to make a person pretty out of it,” she says. “All they seem to do for you is make you feistier. Must be because you’re small.”

“Lois, I swear to god…” Lucy starts to threaten, only to freeze when she hears a soft, “Mmph…Luce?” 

Lucy watches Alex rub her eyes and blink. She gives Alex a small smile when Alex’s eyes finally land on her.

“Hey, Danvers.”

Alex looks like she can’t believe what she’s seeing.

Lucy tilts her head. “Something on my face?” she jokes.

“Oh, thank god.” Before Lucy knows what’s happening, Alex is wrapping her arms around her shoulders. “You’re awake!”

As much as Lucy wants to enjoy having Alex’s arms around her, the weight of Alex against her chest sends a searing pain through her. 

“Ack! Easy!” Lucy manages to gasp out.

Alex pulls away almost immediately. “Shit, sorry!” 

She places a hand on Lucy’s chest. Her touch makes Lucy’s mouth go dry for reasons that she’s fairly certain do not have to do with the opioids in her system and send Lucy’s heart rate skyrocketing.

“How bad are you hurting right now?” Alex asks hurriedly. “I can ring one of the nurses or my mom, see if they can-”

“Danvers, Alex! I’m fine! I’m-” Lucy flicks a glance at Alex’s hand- “I’m fine, I promise. Just, just nervous.”

 _“I’m gonna take that as my cue to go,”_ Lucy hears Lois mutter right before the door opens then clicks shut.

“Fucking finally.” Lucy lets her head loll back against the pillows. She brings a hand up to hold Alex’s, which is still against her chest. It feels so warm. “God, your hand feels so good.”

There’s a squeak from Alex. It takes Lucy a moment to figure out why Alex is suddenly so red. When she does, she feels her own face flame.

“Sorry. I don’t think I have a filter right now,” she says.

“It’s fine,” Alex assures her. “You’re fine. Non-filtered you is different.”

Lucy lifts her head to squint at Alex. “Bad or good?” she asks.

She has to bite back a gasp when Alex drums her fingers against her chest. 

“Good,” Alex says. “You’re more open.”

Lucy doesn’t say that she’s more open with Alex than she is with anyone else, even without the drugs in her system. Their evening at Gray Whale Cove led to that.

Instead, she hums, “So, what’s the damage, Dr. Danvers?”

Alex makes a face. “Please don’t call me that,” she pleads. “I hear that and I start looking for my mother.”

Lucy squeezes Alex’s hand. “Alright, _Alex_ , what’s the damage?”

“You had a pneumothorax - a collapsed lung,” Alex starts. “It happened because it was punctured by-”

“A saber,” Lucy finishes.

“Well that definitely didn’t help, but no.” Alex shakes her head. “Max’s strike appears to have broken a rib. His saber was weighted differently than usual, so he hit you with more force. Force equals mass times acceleration and power equals force times velocity. With the saber being the fastest fencing event of them all coupled with a heavier saber, the power behind his second strike was enough to break your rib and-”

Lucy can spot a spiral when she sees one. She tightens her grip on Alex’s hand to try and get Alex’s attention back on her.

“Alex, hey,” she cuts in, “I got the general picture. Max broke my rib and I’m here now.” A thought occurs to Lucy. “Where is he, by the way?”

Alex’s cheeks turn pink as she looks away and mumbles something.

Lucy tilts her head. “You’re gonna have to repeat that because I’m drugged up to my eyeballs right now.”

Alex coughs. “I said, he’s in recovery right now, probably handcuffed to the bed. He- I, I broke his jaw. And also like three of his ribs, apparently,” she confesses. “His jaw is wired shut.”

Lucy stares at her. She thought it had been a dream - Alex beating Max to a pulp - but apparently not. 

“I would’ve broken more,” Alex continues, “but then you collapsed and I had to get to you because you were bleeding and-”

Lucy cuts her off with a kiss. 

(It’s probably not the best move to make after getting stabbed in the chest, considering that it requires that she sit up. The feel of Alex’s lips against hers and the feel of Alex kissing her _back_ makes the pain more than worth it).

When they break apart, Lucy finds Alex staring at her like Lucy’s gone and hung the moon and stars in the sky. Her eyes are wide and warm and hopeful. It makes Lucy’s stomach flip for all the right reasons.

(Siobhan’s eyes had never been that warm when they kissed).

“Go out with me?” Alex blurts out, then panics, “I mean, only if you want to, obviously! You don’t have to say yes, in fact, we can even forget that I asked-”

“Alex,” Lucy says, “I want to.”

If it’s possible, Alex’s eyes light up even further. They take Lucy’s breath away and leave her feeling like she’s drowning, but in a good way.

“Really?”

Lucy rolls her eyes. “I kissed you, Danvers. I thought that was a pretty clear answer.”

“I dunno,” Alex drawls. “Maybe you should try it again, just to make it clear beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Lucy scoffs, but complies nonetheless because it’s hard to say no when Alex has that stupid, challenging smirk of hers. Even though it still hurts to sit up, their second kiss is easier than the first because Alex’s hands move to support Lucy.

(Lucy’s honestly surprised that no nurses or doctors have burst in with how fast her heart is racing).

“So, what do you say, Alex?” Lucy asks once they have separated again. Her chest is heaving, half from their kiss and half because she really fucking hurts now. “Clear beyond a reasonable doubt?”

Alex gently guides Lucy back down to the bed. “Definitely,” she murmurs.

Lucy grins as best she can with a sudden wave of exhaustion washing over her. “Awesome.”

“Yeah, you are, Luce.” There’s a soft kiss to the edge of her lips. “Get some more rest, I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Promise?” Lucy slurs out.

She feels Alex squeeze her hand. “I promise.”

Lucy smiles. She lets herself drift off, secure with the knowledge that Alex has her back, and thinks about how the line between love and hate is so thin and how the two can so easily be misconstrued for the other. She thinks that maybe, just maybe, she never really hated Alex after all.

Alex is everything that Siobhan wasn’t. She’s everything that Lucy isn’t. And for Lucy, that’s perfect.

Alex is perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Feel free to check me out on tumblr @sandstonesunspear and say hi or leave a prompt.
> 
> Remember to wash your hands, social distance (if you can), and wear PPE properly whilst outside because this pandemic isn't over. 
> 
> Also, black lives - cis and trans - matter. I support those who are out there fighting to make that fact known so that Black people can do what their White peers do with ease: live. I encourage y'all to support the movement so that we can break the cycle of oppression and bring about lasting change.


	3. Cloudy Days and Sunshine Kisses - Director Sanvers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They expect it to be Alex. They don't expect it to be Lucy. Lucy doesn't expect it to be Lucy. But then the cough starts up, the one that's harsh and dry and doesn't go away, followed by the temperature and inability to breathe. She goes downhill so fast that by noon she's on a ventilator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 3 was my prompt and it's based off four songs: Breathe (Fleurie), Soldier (Fleurie), Love is Sacrifice (Ivy & Gold), and Hope Where Have You Gone (Fleurie).
> 
> Also Maggie is a Sephardic Jew in this verse.
> 
> TW for pandemic related things.

They expect it to be Alex. They don't expect it to be Lucy.  _ Lucy _ doesn't expect it to be Lucy. But then the cough starts up, the one that's harsh and dry and doesn't go away, followed by the temperature and inability to breathe. She goes downhill so fast that by noon she's on a ventilator. 

Maggie's never felt more helpless than she does standing on the other side of the glass. At least when Alex had been in the tank all those years ago, Maggie had been able to do something. Now, there’s nothing she can do other than stand and watch Alex work. 

She doesn’t know what fills her with more dread: Lucy on a ventilator or Alex working in a hospital right now, of all times. Alex’s lungs had never quite been the same after the tank. Maggie knows that. Alex knows that. And yet, Alex is still here, working. She hadn’t said no when the call had gone out for doctors. It's only by chance that she's the physician on Lucy's case. 

(Maggie has no idea that Alex fought tooth and nail to get put on the case). 

She watches Alex brush a gloved hand against Lucy's cheek. She wants her hand to be there too. She needs to feel Lucy's skin under her fingertips, needs to feel the warmth. She needs to know that their girlfriend is going to be okay.

-

"Lucy, baby?" Alex whispers. 

There's no response, not that Alex expected one. Her girlfriend is sedated to hell and back. 

She glances over her shoulder to the window. No one else is watching. No one except Maggie. The fear and worry in Maggie's eyes makes Alex's heart break. They share a look. 

Alex licks her lips. "Lucy, I'm right here. We're here," she whispers. 

She carefully peels one glove off just enough so that the heel of her palm is exposed and presses it to the back of Lucy's hand. She's even more careful not to jar any of the IVs in the back of Lucy's hand because she knows how sensitive they are. 

"Maggie's outside and I'm right here. We aren't going anywhere, so fight, please." Alex's voice cracks. "Please,  _ please _ fight, okay? I'm doing what I can but I, I need you to fight too, okay? Please." 

There's still no response aside from the hiss of the ventilator. It takes everything Alex has to not break down crying. This isn't the place for tears. There's no time for them. She has to keep moving. Lucy needs her to. Maggie needs her to.

-

Maggie goes back to their apartment alone. 

She throws her keys into the bowl by the door, kicks her shoes off, and makes her way to the bedroom. She doesn’t bother undressing beyond shrugging off her jacket before collapsing into their bed. 

Her bed. 

Maggie rolls over onto her back and feels her stomach twist. This is going to be  _ her _ bed for the foreseeable future. She hates that little bit of knowledge. She’s grown used to having Alex and Lucy near her, and always sleeps worse without at least one of them there.

She has to get used to it, though. Alex isn’t coming home any time soon. And Lucy–

Maggie swallows back a lump at the memory of Lucy’s unconscious figure surrounded by tubes and wires.

Lucy will come home. Eventually. 

She will. 

Lucy has to. Otherwise, Maggie will break and she knows that Alex will break and nothing will put them back together because they’ve grown to love Lucy so much that it hurts. 

Maggie lets out a breath and shifts so that she’s on her side. She stares out the window. With much of National City on lockdown, the soft orange glow of the city skyline barely shows and leaves the bedroom darker than she remembers it ever being. 

Maggie squeezes her eyes shut and tries to let the exhaustion that’s heavy in her muscles and bones take her to sleep.

It doesn’t work.

She spends most of the night tossing and turning in an empty bed. At some point, Maggie admits defeat and moves to the couch. Sleep doesn’t come any easier. By the time the sun is up, her back hurts and her head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton. 

There’s no sunlight streaming into the apartment; it’s hidden behind a thick layer of clouds that seem to match Maggie’s mood. Still, she forces herself up, groaning as her back cracks in three places. 

She has no idea how long she sits on the couch before she finally does stand. Her body makes its displeasure at having been subjected to the couch known with several more pops. Each sound punches through the silence in the apartment and while they make Maggie wince, she can’t help but be thankful for the noise. 

Her body settles down. So does the silence. 

Maggie hates it.

-

Alex doesn’t go home. 

She hasn’t been home in weeks, not since she started working at the hospital. Some nights, she doesn’t even leave the hospital because she doesn’t have the energy to do anything more than strip and change into street clothes. Instead, she just crashes in an on-call room or in the locker room until someone wakes her up and tells her to go home. Other nights, she leaves for the safe house that the DEO turned into emergency quarters for its medical personnel.

(All of them are in hospitals across National City now).

As far as safe houses go, this one isn’t bad. It’s modern. The furniture is minimalist but tasteful. Everything inside is neat and tidy, if only because Alex really only uses the place to sleep. But it’s also painfully quiet.

Alex hates it. 

She’s grateful she has a place to sleep and do laundry, but she hates that she has to stay here and not at home. Home is where there are three different size coffee mugs in the sink, medical and legal journals scattered across the living room coffee table, and a mess of shoes by the front door. Home is where Maggie and Lucy are.

This safe house isn’t home. It’s a place where the bed is too big, the air too quiet, and the walls are too sterile. There’s no Maggie or Lucy here. Just Alex. 

Alex kicks her shoes off and lets her backpack slip from her shoulders. She doesn’t care about the thump it makes when it hits the ground. All she wants to do is laundry, then sleep until her next shift. 

She throws her scrubs into the wash and sets it so that the water will get as hot as it possibly can. With that done, she makes her way to the bathroom, only to pause when she gets a good look at her face. What she sees makes her wince.

Her face is a mess. It’s red like she has the world’s worst sunburn–a side effect of wearing a face mask for over 48 hours–and she can see areas where the skin has been rubbed raw from the repeated donning and doffing of goggles.

Alex braces her hand against the sink and takes her own image in. She feels a lump in her throat. Then, she breaks down. She drops her head and starts to cry so hard, she can feel her muscles throb in protest. Her tears aren’t those of someone who’s disgusted by their own reflection. They’re the tears of someone who is tired. 

And Alex is tired. 

She’s tired of being in an apartment by herself while her wife is at home on the other side of the city and their partner fights for her life in a hospital bed. Tired of working herself to the bone to try and keep people alive, only to have them die in the end. Tired because people are thanking her for going into work then turning around and rejecting public health recommendations.

Alex is just  _ so tired _ .

-

Maggie wraps tefillin for the first time in ages. 

She joins an online minyan and offers a quick wave in lieu of an actual introduction before busying herself with the act of wrapping. Alex’s tallit is draped across her shoulders and her back. The crisp, dark navy blue wool shawl is lighter than her silk one, but it’s also so much warmer. If she closes her eyes, Maggie can picture Alex’s arms around her.

As much as she loves the image, she banishes it quickly. She needs to focus. 

She tunes out the hazzan as she wraps the leather strap around her arm. She does one revolution around the lip of the box to further secure it in place, then winds the rest of the strap around her forearm. Every so often her lips will move along to the prayers being echoed by everyone else on the Zoom call, but her primary focus is on the weight of the box on her bicep and the leather biting into her skin. 

The head tefillin goes on without much fanfare, aside from a small adjustment of the rainbow kippah she wears. It’s one that Lucy had bought her ages ago, not too long after the three of them had started dating. It’s since become one of her favourites.

Maggie tunes back in to hear the opening bars of the Amidah.

_ “Adonai, sefatai tiftach, ufi yaggid techilatecha…” _

My God, open up my lips so that my mouth will declare Your praises.

Maggie feels her grip tighten around the siddur. The irony of those words does not escape her. How can anyone offer praise to a higher power when the world is falling apart around them?

She spares a glance at everyone else on the Zoom call. Some have their eyes closed as they begin the Amidah. Others have their eyes open, and those that do contain a small spark of  _ something _ in them. It takes her a moment to realise that that spark is fury and grief, just like hers. Not everyone on the call is praying because they believe. They’re praying because they’re angry and scared and because they need something to ground them. 

Just like Maggie.

Maggie makes it through the Amidah without any troubles. It’s only when she reaches the closing prayer, does her throat get tight.

Act for Your sake, for the sake of Your power. Save with Your power and answer me.

Answer me.

Answer me and protect them.

Maggie’s eyes are shut tight as she sways from side to side. She has a death grip on the siddur in her hands now. She’s always been indifferent to the existence of a high power. If they existed, cool. If they didn’t, also cool. She’s not praying because she believes. She’s praying in the hope that there’s something out there. Someone who’s listening, who can hear the desperation and the anger and tip the cosmic scales in her favour so that maybe, just maybe, the women she loves can come home.

Oseh shalom bimromav. Hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu

A bow right.

V’al kol Yisrael

A bow left.

V’imru: Amen.

A final bow to the center.

Maggie exhales and opens her eyes. She feels lighter. Fear still hums under her skin, but the siddur in her hands, the tefillin wrapped around her arm, and Alex’s tallit on her shoulders, they all keep her grounded. 

She catches sight of the picture on the wall by the tv. It’s the one of her, Alex, and Lucy during their wedding. 

(It wasn’t legal, but it didn’t matter. It was a wedding in every way that mattered).

Just like that, the grief comes back. 

She’s quick to wave goodbye and disconnect from the Zoom call. She shuts the laptop, then drops her head into her hand and starts to weep. 

Her sobs echo throughout the apartment. 

Outside, it starts raining.

-

Alex has no idea what day it is. 

Sure, she can tell you the number, but she can’t tell you if it’s Monday or Friday. Days have lost meaning.  _ Time _ has lost meaning. It’s all blurring together.

(She blames her inability to tell the days apart on the hours that she works and the lack of sunshine because National City has been covered in clouds for weeks).

Alex feels like she’s reliving the early days of her residency all over again. She lives off of a combination of energy drinks and some of the worst coffee she’s ever had to drink in her life. It goes down like battery acid and makes her think that she’s going to end up with some nasty ulcers by the time this is all said and done.

In some ways, Alex is thankful for time blurring together. It means there’s no such thing as a week that drags on, because every day is a Monday. It means that the mission parameters don’t change. It means that it’s harder to focus on how long Lucy has been in the hospital on a ventilator.

In other ways, she hates it. She hates how every single day feels like a Monday. She hates that she can no longer tell what the actual day is because it leaves her feeling adrift. She hates how it feels like Lucy has been on a ventilator for forever.

Alex checks Lucy’s chart constantly. She tells herself that she’s only doing it because Lucy’s one of her patients, even though she doesn’t check the charts of any of her other patients with the same frequency. She does her best to be discrete about it. Every time she grabs Lucy’s chart, she also makes sure that she grabs at least two other charts as well.

She doesn’t make a big show about checking charts. She frowns over them, makes notes in her head, and glances at the patient rooms in question at the appropriate times. She thinks she’s being discrete, but she doesn’t realise that her glances last a little longer whenever she looks towards Lucy’s room. Doesn’t realise that her frown is always a little deeper whenever she reads Lucy’s chart. 

Alex doesn’t realise she’s doing either of those things until one of the nurses, Amanda Belmont, sets a cup of coffee down next to her and tells Alex that her poker face sucks.

Alex can feel herself tense. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lies.

Amanda leans against the nurse’s station. “Your wife was on the rig that brought Lane in. You haven’t been able to take your eyes off her or her room since she got here a week ago,” she says. 

“She’s a good friend of mine.” 

The word  _ friend _ tastes like ash in Alex’s mouth. Lucy is so much more than a friend.

Amanda swirls the contents in her own coffee cup. “I also saw you move your glove to touch her hand,” she murmurs. “Skin to skin.”

Her words are so quiet that Alex has to strain to hear them. When they register with her brain, she feels her stomach plummet as her grip tightens on the pen in her hand. 

“Relax, would you? We barely have enough equipment as it is, that includes pens,” Amanda admonishes, though there’s a slightly playful note at the end, like she’s trying to lighten the situation.

It doesn’t work.

“You can’t–” Alex chokes out, her voice a cross between a hiss and a cough. To anyone else, they would think that she’s just choking on air.

She had been so careful. No one other than Maggie had been watching. At least, that’s what she had thought. It’s obvious now that she was wrong.

Alex can feel the panic start to grip her chest. Amanda can’t tell. She can’t, otherwise Alex will be removed from Lucy’s case. The hospital administration knows that Alex knows Lucy, knows that they work together. They don’t know that Alex and Lucy are together. No one does. No one but Amanda, it seems.

“I won’t.” Amanda’s words are still quiet, but they cut through Alex’s panic. “But Dr. Danvers, Alex, that policy is there for a reason.”

Alex’s jaw clenches so tight, she swears she can hear her own teeth creaking under the pressure. She knows that. The DEO has the same policy: no treating family or friends. She’s always been able to get around it, though, because DEO medical is a small operation and she’s the only expert on Kryptonian anatomy they have on staff. Here is no different. She’s the lead physician on Lucy’s case because she told them she knew Lucy’s medical history like the back of her hand.

(It’s not a lie. She does. She knows that Lucy broke her arm after a bad tackle during a high school soccer game. Knows that Lucy’s allergic to penicillin. Knows that Lucy has a high pain tolerance. Knows that Lucy can’t be given morphine because she reacts so negatively to it).

“Lucy Lane is just another patient to me,” Alex says through grit teeth. “Even though we share history, I can remain objective when it comes to her treatment.”

She has been objective so far.

Amanda doesn’t look convinced. But, to Alex’s relief, Amanda also doesn’t look like she’s going to call her out any further.

“Grab different charts,” she says, “and keep your eyes on  _ all _ of your patients, Dr. Danvers.”

“Noted,” Alex replies.

Amanda drains her coffee cup. “Your secret is safe with me.” She pushes away from the nurses’ station. “But you need to work on that poker face of yours sooner rather than later, otherwise others are going to put two and two together.”

(Alex has no idea that everyone else on the floor already knows. She won’t find out until months later, once the pandemic has finally ended, that they knew and kept her secret). 

She leaves to check on Mr. Anderson in room 415 before Alex can respond.

Alex glances back down at Lucy’s chart, then closes her eyes and breathes in.

She can be objective.

Alex opens her eyes. She has to fight the urge to look towards Lucy’s room.

She can be objective.

Alex gives in to the urge, letting her eyes zero in on Lucy’s chest. She watches as it rises and falls in a manner that is so obviously artificial thanks to the ventilator. She has never been more thankful that she’s wearing a mask, because it hides the way she bites her lip.

She can be objective.

Alex exhales harshly and shuts Lucy’s chart. 

She can be objective.

Alex can’t take her eyes off of Lucy’s chest.

-

Kara tells Maggie that CatCo is looking for op-eds from people on the front lines. At first, Maggie says no, she won’t write anything. She doesn’t want to put the life that the three of them have built together out there for the world to see. Then, she sees the protestors. Hears them screaming for haircuts and dine in service and it

It enrages her.

Her wife is on the front lines, their partner is fighting for her life, and she’s stuck at home unable to do  _ anything _ . She can’t shoot the virus to pieces, can’t throw it in jail. But she can write. So she does.

_ My name is Maggie Sawyer. I’m a detective with NCPD’s Science Division. My wife is a doctor on the front lines. Our partner is in the hospital with the virus, fighting for her life. Here’s what I want you to know…  _

Maggie channels the grief and rage that have threatened to overwhelm her for the last week into painting a picture of the women she loves. She wants people to understand that this pandemic is more than numbers in a news report. Numbers aren’t dying.  _ People _ are dying. Spouses, grandparents, parents, even children, they’re all dying and doctors across the planet are scrambling to stop it.

She tells the world about Alex and Rick, though she never mentions the man by name (she won’t give him the time of day or the recognition he so desperately craved). She tells them that her wife’s lungs are scarred from her near-drowning and how, if Alex gets the virus, she likely won’t come off a vent alive and that despite that risk, her wife still answered the call for help.

Maggie manages to keep it together while writing about Alex. It’s when she starts writing about Lucy that she finally starts to cry. 

_ We never expected Lucy to get sick. I don’t think  _ Lucy _ expected it either. We were all so worried about Alex that we stopped paying attention to ourselves because I’m healthy and Lucy is healthy. Lucy was healthy. She’s a health nut; she runs five miles a day (it’s disgusting, I know), is a vegetarian, and actually goes out of her way to get 8 hours of sleep. And still, it wasn’t enough. She got sick and now she’s fighting for her life. _

Maggie pulls no punches in her piece. If those demanding an end to the lockdown want to act like idiots, then she’s going to knock some sense into them.

_ Your haircut is not worth my partner’s life. Your dine-in dinners, breakfasts, lunches and brunches are not worth my wife’s life. _

She does, however, extend a small olive branch of understanding because at the end of the day, as angry as she is, as tired as she is, she gets it. She understands wanting things to go back to normal or at least, as close to normal as they can get. 

_ I want things back to normal. Not normal as in “exactly the same as before”, but normal as in: breakfast in bed with my wife and our partner. Normal as in complaining and laughing while my partner runs circles around me. Normal as in getting to hug my wife after a long day of work. That is the normal I want and I don’t think I’m too far off to think that it’s a normal that other people want as well. But to get there, we have to stay inside. We have to flatten the curve and buy our hospitals time to treat and save as many people as they can.  _

_ So please, stay home. Stay home with your loved ones, leave only when absolutely necessary, and be patient.  _

_ Please, if not for my family and I, then for your families and your communities. _

_ - _

(The article goes viral). 

-

Supergirl brings dinner for doctors across National City. It’s nothing fancy, just takeaway from the various Chinese restaurants that dot Main Street. For the doctors of National City though, she might as well have brought them a five course gourmet meal.

Alex eats on the helipad. She’s only able to because her name has finally come up in the unofficial queue of doctors working the Covid wing; it guarantees her a full 30 minutes to eat and recharge before stepping back into the medical fire.

She and Kara sit in silence. They each poke at their respective meals: chicken chow mein with extra broccoli for Alex, fried rice and orange chicken for Kara. Even though it’s the best thing Alex has eaten in weeks, she can only bring herself to take a few bites here and there.

Alex sets her chopsticks down and stares out at the city. It’s so quiet. At any other time, she would find it peaceful. Now all it does is make her stomach twist. 

“I’m losing more people than I’m saving,” she mutters abruptly.

Kara pauses with chopsticks halfway to her mouth. 

Alex’s fingers start to fiddle with the chain around her neck that holds her wedding rings.

“We have people dying in ambulance bays because they crash so fast. By the time we get to them, we can’t revive them. Every time I hear Code 99, I–” Alex’s breath hitches– “All I can think about is Lucy, Kara. And every time I get to the room and find out which patient it is, when I find out it’s not her, I’m so relieved.”

Alex has a death grip on her wedding rings now. 

_ “How fucked up is that?”  _ she hisses through clenched teeth. “I’m a fucking  _ doctor _ . My job is to save people and I can’t, I’m not, it feels like I’m not saving anyone! Lucy’s dying. Other people are dying and I’m relieved when they are because they’re not Lucy and what kind of doctor thinks like that?”

Alex knows she’s getting worked up. She knows that she’s starting to spiral and that it’s getting harder to breathe but she can’t stop. She’s tired and stressed and feels so fucking  _ helpless. _

“I can’t do anything. I don’t have the equipment or the people or even the drugs I need to do my job beyond supportive care while this stupid virus runs its course and Lucy, I can’t, she declined so fast that–” 

Alex chokes on her own words. Her throat feels so tight now. She can vaguely recognise that she’s starting to hyperventilate but for the life of her, she can’t get her breathing under control. 

“Alex. Alex!” Kara’s hands are cool against her skin. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

“What kind of doctor feels relieved when their patients die?” Alex whispers.

“The kind that’s facing an impossible situation,” Kara murmurs. “You’re doing the best that you can, Alex–”

“And people are still dying!” she snaps. “People are still dying, Kara! I’m a doctor! I’m supposed to be helping people! I’m supposed to be keeping them alive and I can’t do that!”

“Lucy’s still alive, Alex.” Kara’s voice is soft. It stops Alex’s tirade cold. “She’s alive and she’s fighting, just like the hundreds of other patients in this hospital and across the city. They’re still alive because of you and all of the other doctors and nurses. And yeah, okay, some of them are going to die.”

Alex can’t stop her flinch. She knows that people are going to die. She’s known that from the beginning when the first reports started rolling in, even before she was recruited back into civilian medicine. Death isn’t something that she’s ignorant of; she’s dolled enough of it out during her time as a field agent. It’s different now, though. Now, she’s trying to stop it.

“Sometimes,” Kara swallows, “sometimes we try our hardest and people, they just die. We do everything we can but at the end of the day, no matter how hard we try, we can’t–”

“We can’t save them all,” Alex finishes for her.

Trust Kara to use one of her old speeches against her. 

“Yeah.” Kara nudges her shoulder. “Lucy’s gonna be okay. I mean, she’s Lucy freaken Lane!”

The enthusiasm in Kara’s voice makes Alex chuckle. 

“Yeah, she is.” 

Before she can say anything else, Alex feels her pager go off. She glances down to see  **_CODE99, F12R332_ ** flashing up at her. 

She closes her eyes, then pushes herself to her feet. She can feel her body sway for half a second, heavy with a grief and exhaustion that sits deep in her bones. There’s a part of her that wonders if it’ll ever leave; the rest of her knows that it won’t, not until Lucy’s eyes are open and she’s breathing on her own. 

“Alex?” Alex glances over her shoulder. “You’re my hero.”

The firm earnesty behind Kara’s declaration has Alex fighting back a lump in her throat. 

“Thanks, Kara,” she rasps out.

She bolts to the stairs and rushes to the 12th floor. Before the door to the stairwell shuts completely behind her, Alex swears she hears Kara murmur, “Go save the world.”

-

Maggie can’t sleep.

She hasn’t been able to get a good night’s sleep since Lucy was admitted to the hospital. Her bed ( _ their bed _ , her brain reminds her late at night) is too big, the apartment is too quiet, and her mind is too loud. She is exhausted enough from the stress and the worry that as soon as her back hits the mattress, she’ll doze off. But once she jolts awake and realises that Alex and Lucy aren’t on either side of her? She finds sleep hard to find.

Maggie has lost count of the number of hours she’s spent just staring at the ceiling. It’s something she does to keep from looking left or right and being reminded of how alone she is right now. Sometimes, she gets bored enough to fall asleep. Most of the time, she stares until her alarm goes off.

(She keeps telling herself that she’ll turn the alarm off because she has nowhere to go. She doesn’t, though, because it lets her pretend that everything is normal for a moment).

On a whim, she grabs her phone. She doesn’t bother to check the time; she already knows it’s an ungodly hour. Instead, she taps around until she pulls up a FaceTime call with Alex.

Almost as soon as her phone starts ringing, Maggie feels a pang of guilt. It’s late, and if Alex is still at work, then there’s no guarantee that she’ll have time to take Maggie’s call and–

_ “Maggie?” _

Maggie’s internal panic comes to a screeching halt at the sound of her wife’s voice. Her eyes refocus on her phone screen to see Alex’s tired face staring back at her. 

“Alex, hey.” The second the words leave her lips, Maggie wants to facepalm. Of all the introductions, that had to be the one her brain picked? God, she needed sleep.

Maggie watched Alex’s lips twitch into an amused smile.  _ “Hey.”  _ A concerned head tilt.  _ “Everything okay?” _

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s...fine,” she says, even though nothing is really fine. Nothing has been  _ fine _ since her wife went to work in the hospital to treat those affected by this pandemic and their partner ended up on a ventilator. “I just, I can’t sleep.”

She sees Alex’s soften.  _ “Yeah, me neither,”  _ Alex murmurs. 

“What’s keeping you up?” Other than the obvious, goes unsaid.

_ “Honestly?”  _ Maggie hears the crackle of sheets as Alex’s shifts.  _ “The safe house. It’s nice and all, but it’s too quiet. The whole damn city’s too quiet.” _

“I hate it.”

Alex laughs. Maggie can’t stop the smile that rises at the sound. She loves Alex’s laugh.

_ “You and me both, Mags. And Lucy too. I actually think she hates it more than either of us.” _

Maggie’s stomach lurches at the mention of Lucy’s name. The same thing must be happening on Alex’s end, because she looks as stricken as Maggie feels.

“How is she?” It comes out as a whisper.

There’s a heavy sigh, followed by Alex running a hand through her hair. Neither instills Maggie with confidence.

_ “She’s, she’s okay,”  _ Alex says slowly.  _ “She’s, there’s, there’s been improvement. Her white count is still low and her O2 sats still aren’t where I’d personally like to see them, but they’re a lot better compared to those I’ve seen in other patients in the ward.” _

“Is that because she’s on a ventilator?”

_ “It’s hard to tell right now. We won’t know for a few more days, but if they keep going up, then we might…”  _ Alex trails off.

“Might what?” Maggie presses.

_ “Might take her off the vent.” _ Maggie stops breathing.  _ “It’s not set in stone. There’s a whole slew of tests that we have to run and we still have to make sure she’ll actually be able to breathe off of it, but, yeah.” _

“If she gets off the vent, does that mean she’ll be able to come home?”

_ “Not right away.”  _ Alex sighs. _ “Lucy’s managed to avoid some of the complications that we were worried about, like excessive blood clots and heart inflammation. Her kidneys, though, those are starting to worry me.” _

“Are they bad?”

_ “Not yet. There are signs of minor damage, but we’re doing our best to mitigate it.” _

“I’d give her my kidney if it helps,” Maggie mutters. 

She would do anything if it would bring her wife and their partner home.

Maggie doesn’t miss the way Alex’s smile turns sad.  _ “I know, Mags.”  _

Maggie rubs a hand over her face. “I want this over,” she whispers. “I want this over and the both of you home. It’s too quiet and the bed is too big and I can’t sleep because I miss you both so much and I just, I want you and Lucy  _ home _ .”

_ “I know. I want the same thing.”  _

Maggie lets out a breath. “Can you tell Lucy that I love her? The next time you go in?” 

_ “I will, and I do. Every time I’m in there, I tell her that I love her and that you love her and that we both want her out of the hospital,”  _ Alex says. 

“I want you both home,” Maggie says again. “I want…”

To sleep peacefully for the first time in ages. To hold Alex and Lucy close. To feel and hear them breathing.

_ “I know, babe. We’ll get there.” _

On impulse, Maggie asks, “Promise?”

_ “Maggie…” _

Maggie looks away. “I’m sorry. I know.”

Alex can’t make a promise like that, no matter how badly she and Maggie want her to. Everything has to be taken on a day by day basis. Anything more than that is a recipe for even more grief.

“I should, I should probably try for sleep,” she continues, still not looking at Alex. “I’m not thinking straight.”

Alex laughs.  _ “Maggie, nothing about you is straight.” _

It’s such a lame joke, so Alex, that Maggie can’t help but snort at it. “That was so bad, Alex.”

She watches Alex puff up in mock indignation.  _ “I thought that joke was inspired!” _

“You need a new muse, then,” Maggie responds dryly.

There’s a pause as they both wait for Lucy to pitch in. It turns awkward when they both seem to realise that Lucy’s not with them. They aren’t at home together. Alex is on the other side of town and Lucy, Lucy is still in the hospital. 

Alex is the one that breaks the silence.  _ “...I’m gonna try for sleep myself,”  _ she says. Maggie doesn’t know if it's a trick of the light in the safe house or a visual glitch with FaceTime, but she thinks she sees the beginning of tears in her wife’s eyes.  _ “I love you, Maggie.” _

“I love you too, Alex.”

Alex ends the call before Maggie can.

Maggie looks at her phone for a few moments, then tosses it back on the nightstand. She feels a lump rise to her throat and brings a hand to cover her mouth before rolling over onto her side. She curls in on herself, as if the move will be enough to keep her from crying.

It isn’t.

The first sob that leaves her lips hurts. So does the second. By the fifth, Maggie has a death grip on Alex and Lucy’s pillows as her body shakes from the force of her tears. She’s so tired, both from exhaustion and crying in general, but she can’t get the tears to stop.

She cries herself to sleep and dreams that Alex and Lucy are in bed next to her.

-

Lucy wakes up feeling like she did the morning after she took the bar exam.

Everything hurts, from her muscles and bones to her teeth. Her chest and throat feel like they’re on fire.

_ “Easy, ba-Lucy. Cough for me. C’mon, a few strong ones, as best you can.”  _

It’s Alex’s voice, but it sounds so far away. Still, Lucy does as ordered. She inwardly winces at the sound of her coughs; she sounds like the old vets who smoked three packs a day their entire career.

Her last cough brings tears to her eyes. She slumps back against the bed, wheezing and blinking back tears. It takes her a few moments for her vision to stop swimming.

“Ms. Lane–” one of the doctors tries, only to get cut off by a growl that comes from a redhead standing next to him.

Alex. That has to be Alex. Lucy would know that hair and that stance anywhere.

“It’s Major.” Despite her current situation, Lucy feels her lips twitch into a small smile at the sound of Alex’s protective tone. 

“Right. Uh, Major Lane, do you know where you are?” 

Lucy lets her head loll back. She sees medical equipment, sterile white walls, people in scrubs. With all of that, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where she is.

“Hospital,” she croaks out.

The doctor nods. “Yes, you’re at National City General,” she confirms.

Lucy licks her lips. “How-how long?” 

This time, the reply comes from Alex, “Nine days.”

Nine days. A week and a half. 

Lucy’s mind starts to whirl. “Sit–” she tries to spit out, only for the words to get caught up in another coughing fit– “rep, Danvers.”

She hopes that Alex can understand what she means. Hopes that Alex is willing to take her orders, bedridden that she is. Lucy feels so out of control right now. She needs  _ something _ to bring her back down.

Lucy feels a hand wrap around hers and hears Alex clear her throat. “You were brought in nine days ago. We had to intubate you and put you on a ventilator within an hour of your arrival.” Alex’s hand tightens around hers, but Lucy isn’t sure if Alex notices. “Because we still don’t have a means to treat the virus, we’ve been running supportive care while it runs its course.”

“Maggie?” she rasps out.

“Self-isolating. She hasn’t shown any symptoms and her tests continue to come back negative,” Alex says.

For a brief moment, Lucy allows herself to enjoy the relief that sweeps through her at the news. Then, she steels herself before asking, “Damage?”

There’s a heavy silence that follows her question. It makes her stomach twist. She knows that that kind of silence is bad.

“Danvers.” Lucy tries to get her voice to be stern, but it doesn’t work. She doesn’t have the energy.

There’s a cough from the doctor that first spoke. “Ms–Major Lane,” she hastily corrects when Alex glares at her, “you’ve managed to get through this without some of the serious complications, but–”

“But you’ve been in a medical coma for nine days,” Alex cuts in. “There’s been severe muscle wastage. And your kidneys…” she trails off, then clears her throat. “You won’t need dialysis, but there’s scarring now.”

Lucy’s mind whirls at the news. Scarred kidneys. Muscle wastage. Those are things she can’t come back from in a timely manner. Those are things that mean her military career is over because she won’t pass her next PT test like this and it’s such a stupid thing to worry about right now but it’s all she can focus on. 

“Lucy.” Alex’s voice is soft. “Did you hear me?”

She heard Alex loud and clear. She can’t focus on Alex, though. The only thing her brain seems keen on honing in on is that her career as a military woman is over. This isn’t how she wanted it to go. She has a plan,  _ had _ a plan. She had a plan. She had–

In the distance, Lucy can hear Alex ask for the room. A gloved hand touches her face moments later. The feel of nitrile against her skin yanks Lucy from her spiral.

“Lucy, baby, look at me.” Lucy’s vision swims, from tears of pain or frustration she doesn’t know, as she brings her head to look up at Alex. “This sucks.”

Lucy lets out a noise that’s a cross between a sob and a cough. This is one of the things she loves about Alex Danvers, her refusal to issue empty platitudes. Empty platitudes are the last thing Lucy wants right now.

“This sucks and I wish I could change it. I wish–” Lucy doesn’t miss the way Alex’s breath hitches– “I wish I could make it better. I’d give you a kidney and so would Maggie if it would fix things and keep you in. I’d come up with some super technology that could get you back on your feet so you could kick ass and take names like you always do when you have your PT test. But I can’t. I can’t and I am so sorry.”

Lucy shakes her head. Alex doesn’t need to apologise. She knows that Alex has done everything she can. The fact that she’s still alive and awake and has Alex’s hands on her face is testament to that.

“It’s, it’s okay,” Lucy chokes out. 

“Lucy…”

“It–” Lucy tries to tell Alex that it really is okay, but the words get stuck in her throat because it’s not okay.

It’s not.

She just made the O5 list. Her career isn’t supposed to end here. It’s supposed to end after she’s made colonel or general, after she’s had a chance to influence larger changes in how the law is conducted within the army. It’s not supposed to end on a medical discharge.

Lucy can’t stop the sob that leaves her throat. She reaches up and grips Alex’s scrub top, tugging weakly until Alex leans over so she can bury her face in Alex’s shoulder to try and hide her tears as she starts crying.

It hurts to cry. Every lurch her body makes feels like she’s being punched, but despite the pain, Lucy can’t stop crying. She knows that in the grand scheme of things, a medical discharge isn’t terrible; it’s certainly preferable to a dishonorable discharge and a thousand times better than dying. But it

_ It’s not fair. _

She’s supposed to retire at 30 years with Alex and Maggie by her side. She’s supposed to give them flowers whilst giving a speech that acknowledges exactly who they are to her. She’s supposed to be able to give that speech because she did 30 years and no longer has any fucks to give about hiding. 

She feels Alex’s hands move so that they’re against her back. The touch is gentle. It makes Lucy cry harder.

(She knows that she’s supposed to be grateful that she’s alive – and she is – but being alive doesn’t stop her world from feeling as though it’s falling apart around her). 

Lucy hates that she’s crying. It makes her feel weaker than she already is and if there’s one thing she hates more than anything, it’s feeling weak. She’s not supposed to be weak. 

“I’ve got you,” she hears Alex murmur. “We’ll get through this.”

We, not you. 

One word is all it takes to drag Lucy away from the edge. She can feel her hand cramp as it fists Alex’s scrub top harder. She’s Lucy Lane. She’s supposed to not need other people to get back onto her own feet. Then again, there’s a lot of things that are “supposed to be” that won’t be. 

It’s not fair.

She’s alive at the cost of her career and everything she’s built over the last 20 years.

It’s not fair.

She hasn’t missed how tired Alex looks. She knows that Alex has to have been stressed these past nine days, knows that her own stress is minor compared to what Alex is facing. But her brain has decided to be selfish (and maybe, so has Lucy) and focus on all of the things that were supposed to have been before this pandemic became the new normal. 

It’s not fair.

None of this is fair. 

It’s not.

Lucy hates it. 

She hates how weak she is. She hates how she can’t stop crying. She hates how selfish her brain has decided to be. She hates just how unfair everything has become.

She hates it. She cries in Alex’s arms, hurts with each sob, and hates it.

-

Alex has a headache.

She doesn’t know if it’s from stress, a lack of sleep, or the inhuman amount of caffeine she’s consumed over a 48-hour period. What she does know is that her head is tight, the spot above her left eye is throbbing and she

She is  _ so tired _ .

Alex can’t get Lucy’s sobs out of her head. Each shudder of Lucy against her had felt like a stab to the chest. The very memory makes her feel like a failure. Lucy’s alive and breathing on her own with supplemental oxygen, but Alex still feels like a failure because Lucy’s about to lose everything and Alex can’t do a damn thing to fix it.

Alex taps her phone to call Maggie.

She answers almost immediately,  _ “Sawyer.” _

“Mags, hey.” Alex feels the roughness in her voice before it fully registers with her ears. It makes her wince. “Sorry, were you waiting for a work call?”

(Alex has no idea what time it is. She knows that it’s daytime at least, but whether it’s the start or end of Maggie’s workday, she can’t tell. Time moves differently without the sun being visible).

_ “Nope, just thought it was Jackson calling to try and fob another stack of paperwork my way,”  _ Maggie says.  _ “Is everything okay?” _

Yes. No. Maybe. Alex doesn’t know anymore. There’s a lot she doesn’t know anymore.

She doesn’t say that, though. Instead, she says, “Lucy’s awake.”

She hears a rustle and pictures Maggie sitting up straight at the news.

_ “When?” _

“We took her off the vent a few hours ago.” At least, Alex thinks it’s been a few hours. 

_ “How is she?” _

“She’s…” Alex licks her lips. “She’s okay. We’re gonna keep her here for a few more days but, uh, she’s breathing on her own, Baruch HaShem. We have her on supplemental oxygen, 15L high flow with a mask because her O2 sats are still low. She’s cognizant, knows where she is. We have her on blood thinners to prevent her from developing or throwing any clots–”

Alex is rambling. She knows she’s rambling but she can’t stop. The rhythm of medicine is distracting. It keeps her mind off her pounding head. It keeps her from thinking about Lucy sobbing into her shoulder. Medicine keeps her objective.

It keeps her objective.

It keeps her objective until Maggie gently cuts in,  _ “Alex, baby, breathe.” _

Alex does. The breath she takes is shuddery and ragged. It feels like a good reflection of how she feels right now.

_ “There’s more to this, isn’t there?”  _

Alex winces at the question even though her wife can’t see the motion. For once, she wishes that Maggie wasn’t as good a detective as she is. 

“...yeah,” she eventually says. “Yeah. Lucy’s avoided some of the nastier complications but she, she was in a coma for  _ nine _ days, Mags. Between that and just being sick, her muscles have atrophied a lot. And her kidneys. I, we, we tried to stop the damage but there’s only so much you can do when the virus directly attacks kidney cells.”

She hears Maggie murmur a soft,  _ “Jesus.” _

“She doesn’t need dialysis, but she’s borderline for acute kidney injury,” Alex says. “She’s gonna need a transplant at some point in the future but…”

_ “But if she gets one, then she’ll be discharged,”  _ Maggie finishes.

Alex runs a hand through her hair. “Lucy’s facing a discharge no matter what now,” she mutters. “She’s lost so much muscle mass that she won’t be able to recover it in time to take her PT test, let alone pass it. And even if she could, no physician in their right mind would sign off on her taking it because of the kidney injury.”

There’s a deep inhale from Maggie’s side of the line.  _ “Alex, does Lucy know that? Have you told her–” _

“I didn’t have to tell her,” Alex says tiredly. “As soon as we mentioned kidney scarring and muscle wastage, she figured out the rest.”

_ “She didn’t take it well.”  _ It’s not a question. Maggie knows Lucy almost as well as Alex does. She knows that Lucy’s military career is everything to Lucy.

“She tried to. She tried to tell me that it was okay but, fuck, Maggie. She cried,” Alex whispers. “Lucy cried and you know what it means when she cries and I’ve never felt so helpless because I’m a doctor, Maggie. I’m supposed to be helping people and making them better but I can’t help Lucy. I can’t do anything to fix this. I kept her alive but _ I can’t fix this. _ ”

Alex can feel the blood starting to pound in her ears. It makes her head feel worse. She knows she should probably try and calm down, but she can’t. She can’t calm down, just like she can’t fix Lucy’s muscles or her kidneys or the fact that Lucy is about to lose the career she’s devoted her life to.

She doesn’t realise that she’s started crying until she notices that her vision is starting to blur. 

_ “Alex, Alex, listen to me,”  _ she hears Maggie plead.  _ “You don’t have to fix it.” _

“Yes, I do!” Alex snaps. “I have to fix it because if I don’t, then it means I failed! It means I failed as a partner and as a doctor because as her partner, I’m supposed to protect her and as a doctor, I’m supposed to heal her! I’m supposed to–”

_ “Alex, shut up, right now.”  _ Alex’s tirade comes to a screeching halt at the sound of Maggie’s harsh tone.  _ “Stop and listen to what I have to say, okay? You haven’t failed Lucy. You haven’t failed anyone. Not her, not me. No one.” _

Alex’s grip tightens around her phone. “I-I promised to support her and protect her in sickness and in health, Maggie,” she whispers. “I promised–”

_ “I know. I promised the same thing, remember?”  _ Maggie’s voice is soft now.  _ “And you haven’t broken that promise.” _

“She’s gonna get discharged, Maggie. Lucy just made the O5 list and she’s gonna get discharged. She’s gonna get discharged and it’s going to crush her and–”

_ “And it’s something that’s out of your control, Alex. It’s out of both of our hands,”  _ Maggie cuts in.  _ “That is not on you. You already did your part. You kept her alive. Lucy’s alive, Alex.” _

Alex does the best she can to swallow the lump in her throat. “Yeah,” she chokes out. 

_ “She’s alive because of you and all of the other doctors and nurses working around the clock,”  _ Maggie continues.  _ “She’s alive, and the very fact that she’s alive means that you didn’t fail. You did it. The goal is to make sure your patients survive, right?” _

“Yeah.”

_ “Lucy survived. You met the goal. The cost to get there sucks for everyone, but you got there.” _

“...Lucy’s going to be discharged,” Alex says.

_ “I know.” _

“She doesn’t deserve that.” Lucy deserves more than that. She deserves to make general and change the world even more than she already has.

_ “No, she doesn’t.” _

“I want to fix it.”

_ “I know, Alex, and that’s one of the things I love about you,”  _ Maggie says.

“I can’t fix this.” Saying it out loud makes Alex angry because she should be able to fix it. She should. 

(In a different world, maybe a perfect world, she would).

_ “No, you can’t.”  _

Alex suddenly feels exhausted. The blood has stopped pounding in her ears, but her head still hurts like a bitch. She leans her head against the wall of the stairwell.

“I hate this.”

She hates her inability to do anything beyond supportive care. She hates that she’s met the goal but still feels like a failure. She hates that Lucy is going to lose her career because of something outside of anyone’s control. But most of all, she hates being powerless.

She hates it.

-

Lucy hurts while she dreams. 

The hospital can't give her anything for the pain; they ran out of standard pain medication weeks ago. All they have is heavier drugs and those are strictly reserved for those who go on vents. Even if they did have morphine on hand, Lucy still wouldn't be given it because of her history of adverse reactions to it. 

Alex checks on her constantly. She claims she's just checking Lucy's latest round of stats to make sure she's progressing well, but even in her pain-hazed state, Lucy knows it's a lie. She can see the grief in Alex's eyes, can see how Alex's grip tightens whenever she fails to muffle a grunt of pain. 

(On more than one occasion, she swears she hears Alex whisper an apology for not being able to stop the hurt. Lucy always wants to tell her that it's okay, but she can't get the words out). 

In between waves of pain, Lucy lets herself drift through her dreams. She dreams of a dog (large, fluffy, unfortunately named Gertrude), a child (they're the spitting image of Alex, but they have Lucy's eyes and Maggie's dimples), and a house (an actual house with a yard). She absently wonders how much of it is just a random dream and how much of it is a fantasy that she truly wants. 

(The answer is all of it).

Sometimes, she’ll let her mind wander to the things that were supposed to happen. She thinks about the promotion ceremony that will never happen, the speech that she’ll never give, the flowers she wanted Alex and Maggie to receive when she finally retired. She doesn’t cry when she thinks about it (she feels like she doesn't have any more tears left to shed). She just squeezes her eyes tight and pretends that the pain she’s fighting is physical.

Maggie calls. A nurse, whose name is Amanda if Lucy remembers hearing correctly, brings Alex’s phone in.

Lucy’s vision swims as she watches Amanda place the phone on the table next to her bed. She wants to pout and get the phone closer but it takes too much energy. Besides, she can still hear Maggie loud and clear.

“You have ten minutes, Detective,” she hears Amanda tell Maggie. “Major Lane needs to sleep.”

Lucy wants to argue that she slept for nine days but then Maggie laughs and the words die in her throat. Dreaming of Maggie’s laugh is different than hearing it in real life. Lucy prefers the real thing to dreams and memories.

_ “How’re you feeling, Luce?” _ Maggie asks once the door hisses shut.

“Like…” Lucy licks her lips. “Like I went ten rounds with Muhammad Ali. And lost. Badly.”

_ “Have they not given you something to–”  _

“There’s nothing left. What they have, they have to save it for the people who need it.”

_ “Lucy, babe, you sound like you need it,”  _ Maggie argues gently.

“Other people need it more than me.”

Lucy doesn’t tell Maggie that Alex had quietly offered to get the drugs made available so that she could have something in her system to reduce the pain, at least for a moment. She doesn’t tell Maggie that she told Alex no, because she knew that Alex was only making the offer because they’re partners. She doesn’t tell Maggie that she said no, because she would rather be in pain than let Alex compromise herself like that.

She doesn’t tell Maggie any of that.

She doesn’t have to because they’ve been together long enough that Maggie knows when to read in between the lines. The silence on the other end makes it clear that Maggie knows what Lucy isn’t saying.

_ “What can I do then?”  _

“Just...just talk. Tell me something, anything,” Lucy says, voice slurring as another wave of pain picks that exact moment to crash through her.

_ “Okay.” _

Lucy closes her eyes and lets the sound of Maggie’s voice wash over her. Within moments, she decides that the sound of Maggie’s voice is better than any pain medication. She listens to Maggie ramble about everything from how she’s going mad having to stay in their apartment by herself to how Jackson keeps trying to shove his paperwork off on her because she’s stuck at home. She feels her heart ache when Maggie tells her how much she misses her and Alex; she misses Maggie too, so damn much. 

Lucy can feel herself starting to drift off. Maggie must notice too, because her voice grows softer, more comforting. 

Just before her eyes slip shut, she hears Maggie murmur,  _ “I love you, Lucy.” _

Hearing Maggie say ‘I love you’ never fails to make Lucy smile. Now is no different. Smiling takes so much effort right now, but Lucy’s lips still twitch into a small smile regardless. The additional exhaustion is worth it.

“Too,” Lucy manages to get out. 

She can’t reply in full. She doesn’t have the energy, only the hope that Maggie understands what she means.

(She does. Maggie always does. It’s her super power). 

Lucy drifts off and dreams.

She dreams of Maggie and Alex. She dreams of their arms around her, their smiles and laughter, their coffee cups in the sink.

She dreams and she doesn’t hurt.

-

Lucy ends up picking up a second infection: bacterial pneumonia. 

Alex doesn’t panic when she gets the results. She doesn’t.

(She does, but only for a second. It’s the longest second of her life).

Bacterial pneumonia isn’t great, but it’s a step up from coronavirus. She can do more than just supportive care this time around. She can actually treat the disease instead of watch as it runs its course.

It takes Alex a week to clear out the infection. For the first time in ages, her hands are steady as she injects medication into Lucy’s central line. She watches Lucy’s face twist into a grimace when the vancomycin enters her system. She can’t stop the laugh that bubbles up when Lucy complains that it tastes like a spoiled MRE.

(Even if she’s never been able to taste it, Alex doesn’t doubt Lucy’s claims. She knows that Lucy has a weird ability to taste drugs that are administered intravenously).

It’s another three days of testing before Lucy is cleared to go home. Alex doesn’t make the call herself. She takes a consulting role and leaves the final decision to her team because she’s become painfully aware of how unobjective she’s been whilst treating Lucy. 

(Alex tries not to slump in relief when the vote comes back declaring Lucy fit to leave, but she does. No one calls her out on it).

Alex is selected to be the person that will wheel Lucy out. She almost protests – if only to try and silence the part of her that’s grown increasingly aware of how unobjective she is when it comes to Lucy – but the knowing looks her colleagues give her shut her up. 

Amanda gets Alex new scrubs. Not new as in ‘just washed’, but new as in ‘never been worn, still in the bag.’

Alex has no idea how the nurse managed to get her hand on them. She knows that the hospital doesn’t have any more scrubs to give out because she was only issued two pairs after getting drafted and everyone who came in after her received a single pair. 

With everything in such short supply – masks, gowns, face shields, scrubs – the sight of the crisp bag makes Alex stare. It also makes her feel incredibly guilty. There are other doctors here, newer ones who were only given a single pair of scrubs because there aren’t enough to go around, who could use a second pair. A second pair means less laundry and a few more precious moments of sleep once you’re off shift. It means less risk of infection. Those doctors need scrubs. She doesn’t. She has her pairs. 

Amanda won’t be swayed though. She presses the bag into Alex’s hands. “Your girlfriend made it, Dr. Danvers,” she says in a no-nonsense tone. “You can’t go downstairs and wheel her out to your wife in the same pair of scrubs you’ve been wearing for the last 48 hours.”

Alex knows that she’s right. She wants to argue that she could just change into street clothes, but she’s still on call for another 12 hours and she can’t afford to contaminate her street clothes before her shift ends. She takes the bag without any further argument and allows Amanda and a few of the other nurses to shoo her towards the locker room.

Alex’s shower is quick.

She sets the water to a temperature that’s just a step under scalding and steps into it without as much as a flinch. It’s uncomfortable, sure, but she’s had worse. The sting grounds her in the moment. It keeps her from getting too much into her own head. She scrubs her whole body like she’s preparing for the most important surgery of her life.

(She doesn’t let herself think about Lucy or Maggie. She knows that if she does, she’ll break down and she can’t afford to do that. Not right now).

When she gets out, her skin is pink. Alex has a feeling she’s scrubbed herself just shy of raw, but she can’t bring herself to care as she pulls on the brand new set of scrubs. All that matters is that she’s clean and so are the scrubs that she’s wearing. 

The walk back to the Covid ward is quieter than Alex is used to it being. It could just be her brain or it could just be that she’s calm for the first time in forever because Lucy is finally going home. Whatever it is, she swears she can hear herself breathing. It’s just her in the hallway, no chaos, no codes. Just her.

The door to Lucy’s room hisses open. 

Alex absently pulls on gloves as she walks in. Her thoughts are too caught up on Lucy and Maggie to notice much outside of her usual routine. At least, they are until a bright burst of sunlight catches her eye. She looks up and freezes.

Lucy is in a wheelchair by the window.

(She has to be in a wheelchair. The muscles in her legs have wasted away to the point where she’ll have to learn how to walk again. It’s one more thing that makes Alex curse this fucking virus).

The sun catches Lucy perfectly and Lucy

Lucy is  _ breathtaking _ . 

She’s dressed in a simple pair of black leggings and a loose emerald green t-shirt. Her hair is up in a messy twist that Alex didn’t realise she missed seeing up until now. Alex doesn’t think Lucy could look more perfect than she does right now because Lucy is alive and breathing and the sunlight makes her look like she’s glowing.

“See something you like, Danvers?” 

Lucy’s wry remark makes Alex jolt. The smirk that accompanies it makes Alex’s heart flutter. God, she’s missed that smirk. 

“Definitely,” Alex says without hesitation. She takes a step forward. “You ready to go home?”

Home. 

Alex tries to ignore the way her heart aches at the word as she says it. Lucy is going home. That’s a good thing. But Alex’s heart hurts because Lucy is going home and she’s not. Alex won’t be going home for a long time. She will still be spending the foreseeable future on the other side of the city away from the women she loves.

Fire blazes in Lucy’s eyes. “I’m so ready,” she says.

Alex smiles behind her mask. “Alrighty then, Major Director,” she starts, her smile widening at Lucy rolling her eyes. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

Lucy groans. “That was so bad, Alex.”

“So bad that it’s good,” Alex retorts.

She places her hands on the back of Lucy’s hospital-issued wheelchair and starts to wheel her out.

“It’s great, actually,” she hears Lucy whisper.

Alex moves her hand to rub a thumb across the back of Lucy’s shoulder. “Yeah.”

Lucy is going home and it makes Alex’s heart hurt. She can deal with it though, because Lucy is alive and breathing.

“Yeah,” she mutters again.

Lucy is alive and breathing. That makes sleeping alone in a safe house across town so worth it. 

It makes everything so worth it.

-

Maggie paces.

She can feel Vasquez’s annoyed but fond look burning into her, but Maggie can’t make herself stop. She knows that Lucy is okay now, knows that Lucy is on her way, but she still finds herself anxious beyond belief.

Maggie does an about face that Lucy would be proud of and prepares to continue another round of pacing when the sound of an elevator ping reaches her ears. She stops mid step as the lobby goes silent. She watches the elevator doors slowly open. Then, she catches sight of Alex behind a wheelchair. Maggie lets her gaze move down and sees

Lucy.

Maggie sees hands moving, can vaguely hear everyone applauding as Lucy is wheeled towards the exit, but she pays little attention to either. Her focus is on the woman in the chair and the woman behind her.

Before Maggie knows it, Lucy is in front of her and then Lucy is in her arms and she’s crying so hard because Lucy is here and alive. She wants so badly to kiss Lucy but this isn’t the place and besides, there are masks in the way, so she settles for pressing her forehead to Lucy’s. She holds Lucy in a death grip with one arm and reaches out for Alex with the other. She doesn’t care that there are dozens of eyes on them; she needs to feel her wife’s hand in hers even if it’s only for a second.

She doesn’t have to wait long before she feels Alex’s fingers wrap around hers. Even though Alex is wearing gloves, Maggie imagines she can still feel the warmth. It makes her cry harder. This is the closest she’s been to the women she loves in almost three weeks. 

Eventually, Maggie pulls away to get a better look at her wife and their partner. Both look exhausted, albeit for very different reasons. A shower for Alex and brand new clothes for Lucy have done little to change that look. The shadows under Alex’s eyes are so dark, they might as well be bruises. Lucy, on the other hand, is paler than Maggie has ever seen her.

Both are still the most beautiful women Maggie has ever seen.

She locks eyes with Alex before drumming out ‘thank you’ and ‘I love you’ in morse code along the small of Lucy’s back. 

It’s a move that Maggie doubts anyone else notices. Alex obviously does notice, because Maggie sees the corner of her eyes crinkle with a smile and watches her fingers tap out, ‘I love you too.’ Lucy definitely notices as well, if the way that she presses her forehead to Maggie’s shoulder is anything to go by.

“You ready to go home, Luce?” Maggie murmurs into Lucy’s hair.

“So ready,” she hears Lucy mutter into her shoulder.

Maggie pulls away so that Lucy can get situated back in the wheelchair. She walks behind so that she can push Lucy to the car that Vasquez has waiting. Her hands brush against Alex’s as she moves to grip the handles. 

(To anyone else, the move looks entirely accidental. Maggie and Alex know that it’s anything but. It’s a way for them to get close to each other and share a brief moment of intimacy after weeks apart).

“Let’s go home.”

-

Maggie carries Lucy across the threshold. 

Lucy protests and laughs the entire time. Maggie stumbles only once when Lucy starts coughing. The sound sends a lash of fear through her, but it fades when Lucy flashes a smile her way. 

(Maggie has missed that smile almost as much as she has missed having Lucy in her arms).

Maggie tries to ignore how light Lucy is in her arms. The lawyer was never heavy, but there’s a stark difference to how she feels now compared to before her time in hospital. It’s just another thing that’s changed because of the virus. 

She sets Lucy down gently on the bed ( _ their bed) _ , then turns away for half a second to shrug her jacket off. When Maggie looks back, her breath catches in her throat. 

For the first time in weeks, sunlight is flooding the bedroom ( _ their bedroom).  _ It catches Lucy perfectly. The way the sunlight highlights Lucy’s jaw and cheeks and her lips makes a lump rise in Maggie’s throat. She hasn’t seen Lucy look like this in what feels like forever.

“You okay, Mags?” Lucy’s voice is soft, half because she’s still so weak and half because she likely doesn’t want to startle Maggie.

Maggie stares at Lucy. Then, she climbs on the bed and presses her lips to Lucy’s.

Kissing Lucy is like kissing the sun. It’s warm and comforting and it takes Maggie’s breath away. The kiss itself is soft (she has to hold herself back from kissing Lucy harder) and it’s likely one of the best she’s ever shared with the lawyer.

Maggie ends the kiss far sooner than she would like to because she can tell that breathing is becoming an issue for Lucy. She pulls away and has to bite back a small smile at the noise of protest that Lucy lets out.

Lucy pouts. “I was enjoying that,” she says.

Maggie kisses her cheek. “I know, but I just got you home and I’d like you to not end up back in hospital.”

She doesn’t think she could handle Lucy being in hospital again so soon. Not after these past 19 days. 

Lucy takes Maggie’s hand. Her grip isn’t nearly as strong as Maggie is used to it being, but the feeling of Lucy’s hand against hers is wonderful. 

“I’m not going anywhere, Sawyer.”

Maggie presses a kiss to Lucy’s jaw. “You better not, Lane.” 

She shifts so that she’s on her back and gently pulls Lucy so that the smaller woman’s head is on her chest. She runs a hand through Lucy’s hair, drawing a happy sigh from Lucy. The two of them lay in silence for what feels like forever.

“I missed you,” Maggie eventually says. Her arm unconsciously tightens around Lucy. “I missed you  _ so fucking much _ .”

She hates the way her voice breaks towards the end. She shouldn’t be this emotional. Lucy is home. She’s alive and breathing and safe. There’s no reason to be emotional.

Maggie feels Lucy brush a kiss against her chin. “I missed you too, Maggie,” she hears Lucy husk out.

Maggie bites her lip to try and hold back her tears. There’s no reason to be emotional. Lucy is home. She’s alive and breathing and safe.

“Maggie?” 

Maggie tries to hum something affirmative, but it gets stuck in her throat.

“Maggie, I’m okay. I’m here, it’s okay.”

The sob breaks free despite Maggie’s best efforts. She holds Lucy even tighter and buries her face into Lucy’s hair as she starts to cry. 

“I’m okay. I’m here, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

Lucy’s words make Maggie cry harder because they’re true. Lucy is here now. She’s back. She survived. She’s here, breathing and safe and  _ alive _ . 

Lucy is alive.

She’s here and she’s alive.

She’s here and she’s alive and Maggie can finally breathe.

She can finally breathe.


	4. Religion and LGBT - The Directorship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy's first Shabbat after she moves in with Alex. There's gay pining.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 4 is G's prompt and they picked Religion and LGBT. This is my take on it.
> 
> -
> 
> In this verse, Alex didn't join the DEO. Instead, she dropped out of medical school and went to rabbinical school and eventually became an ordained rabbi. Lucy is an ethnic Maronite through her mother. Maronites belong the Maronite Church, an Eastern Catholic Church, and are in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. Lucy and Alex meet after the former is assigned to Alex's synagogue as a part of a security detail.

Lucy doesn’t know why she’s so nervous.

Maybe it’s because this is the first Shabbat she’s experienced since she moved in with Alex. Maybe it’s because she’s only ever celebrated Shabbat at a synagogue instead of in someone’s home. Or maybe it’s because the last week has made her realise that moving in with the woman she’s crushing on might not have been her best idea.

Saying yes to Alex’s offer had been a great idea in the moment. Lucy needed a new place because she and James had broken up and she was the one moving out, and Alex was the one who had the spare bedroom that wasn’t being used.

Whatever the reason is, Lucy finds her hands shaking as she slides her key into the lock. The door opens without much trouble and she steps inside.

She’s met with the smell of fresh bread, grilled fish, and spiced rice, and the sound of Alex humming a random nigun. The scent of fish and spiced rice take Lucy aback more so than the sound of Alex humming, because the latter is one of the first things she had grown used to after she and the rabbi met. The former though? That throws Lucy off because she recognises those smells even though it’s been years since she encountered them.

Lucy sets her keys down a little harder than normal. 

The humming stops. Alex looks up from the steaming plate of fish and rice that Lucy guesses has just come off the stove and gives Lucy a smile that seems to light up the kitchen.

“Welcome home, honey!” Alex’s greeting is accompanied by a wide grin that has Lucy rolling her eyes even as her stomach flutters.

“Oh my god, Danvers, you’re so fucking domestic,” she teases without any real heat.

“Whatever you say, sugarplum.”

Lucy wrinkles her nose. “Never call me that again because that was truly horrible.”

“Sure thing, honeybunch.” Alex’s grin is so wide now, a part of Lucy is worried that Alex’s face is going to get stuck like that.

“Danvers…” Lucy warns, trying to sound intimidating whilst also trying to ignore the butterflies that have yet to settle down in her stomach.

(She knows that Alex doesn’t really mean anything by it. The two of them are, well, Lucy doesn’t have a word to describe what they are. She wants to say that they’re friends, but she’s fairly certain that friends don’t spend months flirting with each other the way that she and Alex do).

Alex holds her hands up. “Alright, alright, I’ll stop.” She tilts her head. “How was work?” 

Lucy groans. 

Alex makes a sympathetic noise. “That bad?”

“Let’s just say thank god it’s Friday because I am this close-” Lucy brings her pointer finger and thumb together so that they’re almost touching- “to having Pam come up with termination papers and gutting 90% of my division.”

Alex winces. “Can you even do that?” she asks.

Lucy shrugs. “I have Pam. With Pam, I can do anything because Pam,” she says, tossing her backpack by the couch. “That’s a problem for future Lucy though, because it’s Friday and I’m off call for the next 24 hours.”

“Good thing it’s also Shabbat then,” Alex muses. “Gives you a chance to wind down and decompress. Sucks that you don’t get an extra day, that way you’d be able to go to Mass.”

Lucy bites her cheek to keep herself from telling Alex that she hasn’t been to Mass in months. She doesn’t tell Alex that her posting as a part of the DEO-issue security detail ended ages ago and that the only reason she shows up at the synagogue on Friday nights and Saturday mornings is because the Shabbat services speak to her in a way that Mass never did. 

She doesn’t tell Alex any of that. Instead, she waves her hand and says, “It’s fine. Shabbat’s cooler anyway, considering my usual plans for a Friday night involve pizza and cheap beer.”

That’s only partly a lie. 

“I will say, this is a definite improvement to those plans.” Lucy motions to the still steaming plate of fish and rice.

To Lucy’s surprise, Alex’s cheeks turn pink. “Oh, yeah. I uh, well it’s your first Shabbat with me outside of a synagogue, so I figured I’d try to make it special.”

“I didn’t know you knew what sayadieh was,” Lucy muses. 

“I didn’t, actually,” Alex admits. “Kara did. She’s the one who sent me the recipe, ‘cause I asked her if she had any recommendations for Lebanese food. I wanted to make you some because I remember you mentioning that you were craving it earlier this week and-”

Alex’s rambling has the butterflies in Lucy’s stomach moving up to her heart because of course, Alex did that. If Lucy’s time on the security detail for Dor Hadash had taught her anything, it’s that Alex Danvers notices the small things. It’s why Alex’s synagogue had been a refuge for aliens long before the fire. It’s why her congregants, alien and human, find dollar bills in their coat pockets or hot meals in their cars when they need them the most. It’s something that’s so uniquely Alex and Lucy-

Lucy loves it. It’s one of the many things next to Alex’s smile or her refusal to back down from a fight, that Lucy loves about her. 

“Alex,” she cuts in gently, “thank you. You didn’t have to-”

Alex ducks her head. “I wanted to,” she says. “I wanted to because...because I just wanted to.”

Lucy fights the urge to raise an eyebrow in question. In all the time she’s known the rabbi, Alex has never given such a half hearted explanation. 

“It looks and smells amazing,” Lucy says truthfully. 

(It reminds her of home, of better days before her mother got sick. Before things fell apart between Lucy and Lois. Before Lucy threw herself into trying to satisfy her father’s expectations). 

Alex grins again in response, but this time, it’s smaller. Shyer. Like she’s not quite sure if Lucy is telling the truth or just humouring her. 

“You wanna plate it up whilst I go get the candles ready?” Alex asks. 

“Sure thing.” 

Alex steps away to finish setting up. 

Lucy grabs a large spoon and fork from the drawer and gets to work putting their plates together. A bed of rice, fish on top, and a sprinkling of roasted almonds and pine nuts. It’s not the fanciest presentation but it’s just the two of them tonight, so Lucy figures it doesn’t have to be fancy. 

(Years of eating MREs have made Lucy indifferent to over the top food presentations. As long as it’s on a plate, she’ll eat it). 

“Ready?”

Lucy glances over her shoulder to see Alex with a silver platter in her hands; the platter itself holds two candlesticks. She nods. 

“Ready when you are, Danvers. Sun looks like it’s about to start setting, anyway.”

She steps back to let Alex set the platter and the candlesticks on the island. She watches Alex reach into a drawer and pull out a match box. From the way the matches rattle inside, Lucy can tell it sees constant use.

Alex strikes a match and lights the candle on the left, then the right. Then, she waves her hands three times, as if bringing the light to her face. 

Lucy has seen Alex do this enough times at the synagogue to know to follow the motions. She brings her hands to cover her eyes and lets Alex’s voice wash over it. 

_ “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha’olam…” _

Lucy mouths the words alongside Alex. She doesn’t want to disturb the peace that Alex’s voice brings. 

_ “Asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav vetzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat…” _

Lucy smiles as Alex draws out the last word. Alex’s voice is beautiful in Lucy’s opinion. She knows that she could get lost in it for hours and not get bored.

(It’s why Lucy will drag herself out of bed at 7 on a Saturday morning for Torah study. The food is pretty good, but watching and hearing Alex engage with her congregation about Torah and inevitably getting off track is even better).

The sound of two metal cups and a glass bottle being set down on the island have Lucy lowering her hands. She sees two kiddush cups and a bottle of Kedem grape juice next to the glowing candles. 

Alex gives her an apologetic look. “Sorry, I don’t have any wine tonight,” she says.

Lucy waves the apology away because she didn’t expect Alex to use wine at all. She knows that the redhead doesn’t have any alcohol in the apartment. “It’s fine,” she assures Alex. 

Alex holds a full cup out to Lucy. “Kiddush cup for you.”

“Thanks.”

Alex clears her throat. “Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, borei p’ri hagafen,” she starts to sing.

This time, Lucy can’t stop herself from joining in as Alex continues, “Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’ratzah vanu, v’Shabbat kodsho b’ahavah uv’ratzon hinchilanu, zikaron l’maaseih v’reishit. Ki hu yom t’chilah l’mikra-ei kodesh, zecher litziat Mitzrayim.”

They lift their cups higher. 

“Ki vanu vacharta, v’otanu kidashta, mikol haamim. V’Shabbat kodsh’cha b’ahavah uv’ratzon hinchaltanu. Baruch atah, Adonai, m’kadeish haShabbat!”

The last note hangs in the air for several moments. Then, “L’Chaim!”

Out of habit, Lucy throws the contents of her cup back like a shot. She starts spluttering a moment later when she remembers that she’s drinking out of an actual cup and not one of the little plastic sample cups that the synagogue uses.

She hears Alex chuckle. “You good, Luce?”

Lucy coughs and thumps her chest to try and clear it. “I’m fine,” she wheezes out.

She does her best to pretend that the heat in her cheeks is because of her coughing fit and not because Alex called her ‘Luce’.

(Alex is the only one who calls her ‘Luce’).

“Challah now?” she asks, once her breathing is under control.

“Yup!”

The challah in question is fresh. For the first time since she got home, Lucy notices a light dusting of flour on the countertops and a smudge of it on Alex’s cheek. She tries not to make it obvious that she’s staring, but Alex must notice because the next thing Lucy knows, Alex is giving her a lopsided grin that sends her heart rate skyrocketing. 

“What, did you think I went out to Wegmans and bought a loaf?” she asks. 

“Of course not!” Lucy sputters. “I just, you never struck me as the baking type.”

Alex laughs. “I’d be a pretty pathetic rabbi if I couldn’t bake a loaf of challah,” she says. “Although, to be honest, it’s the only thing I can bake.”

“It smells like it turned out great,” Lucy says. 

“Ready to find out of it tastes as good as it smells?” Alex asks. 

“Duh.”

Alex uncovers the challah. Both of them place their hands on it.

Lucy readies herself for the bracha. It’s the one bracha she has down because compared to the bracha for kiddush, the bracha for motzi is much simpler. At least, it usually is. The cheeky grin on Alex’s lips is the only warning Lucy has that things might go a little differently tonight.

“Hamotzi lechem min haaretz, we give thanks to God for bread,” Alex sings.

Lucy bites back a laugh. Alex doing the campstyle version of the blessing for bread never fails to be amusing.

“Our voices rise in song together as our humble prayer is said,” Alex continues and Lucy joins in, “Baruch atah adonai, eloheinu melech haolam, hamotzi lechem min haaretz. A-ahh-men!”

They both tear the challah loaf together before breaking into laughter.

“You’re such a dork, Danvers.”

Alex pretends to preen. “You know it!” she says, shooting Lucy fingerguns.

Lucy rolls her eyes and gently shoves Alex’s shoulder. “I take back everything nice I ever said about you.”

“Hey!” Alex protests. “See if I feed you tonight then!”

“That threat doesn’t work when you already had me plate the food, Danvers.” Lucy motions to the plates in question.

Alex deflates. “Damn, I didn’t think that one through,” she mutters.

“You really didn’t.” Lucy holds up a fork. “So, you gonna keep bitching or are we gonna eat? ‘Cause I’m hungry and between this and the challah, my stomach is ready to eat itself if it doesn’t get food in it soon.”

“Well we can’t have that. Imagine the paperwork,” Alex jokes.

Lucy scowls. “I refuse to. I’m off for the next 24 hours, that means no mentioning paperwork in any shape or form.”

Alex busts out laughing. “Why’d you become a lawyer if you hate paperwork that much?” she asks once her laughter dies down. 

Lucy shrugs and scoops up some fish and rice with her fork. “Why’d you become a rabbi?”

“Touché.”

Lucy hums around a mouthful of spiced fish. 

The two of them eat in silence. It should be awkward, but it isn’t. Instead, the silence between them is easy. 

Eventually, Lucy chuckles because it shouldn’t be this easy. She shouldn’t be able to eat dinner with someone and have the silence not be awkward. She shouldn’t be able to stand next to someone who was an enemy just months prior and quite literally break bread and laugh afterwards. She shouldn’t be able to do any of that, and yet, here she is doing just that.

(If she’s being honest with herself, it scares her just a bit).

Alex’s eyebrows quirk up at the chuckle. “What’re you thinking about?” she asks.

“Just wondering when my life turned into the opening line of a stand up comedy routine,” Lucy says.

Alex’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

Lucy tilts her head. “A Maronite walks into a rabbi’s apartment for Shabbat,” she draws out.

Alex immediately rolls her eyes. “Okay, first of all, you didn’t really walk in, you have a key because you live here,” she says. “Second, this is your apartment too, so it would be ‘a Maronite comes home to celebrate Shabbat with her rabbi flatmate.’” 

Lucy pointedly ignores how her stomach flips at how easily Alex calls their shared apartment ‘home’.

She coughs. “Yeah, well, I still think it’s funny.”

“Yeah?” Alex raises an eyebrow.

Lucy leans against the island. “If you’d told me a year ago that I would be living with a rabbi - a rabbi that my organisation tried to arrest for aiding the alien population of National City - I wouldn’t have believed you.”

If anything, she would have laughed. And if someone like Vasquez had been the one to tell her that? She would have had them drug tested on the spot.

Alex looks thoughtful. “Okay, that’s fair,” she concedes. “Honestly, I would’ve reacted the same way if someone told me I’d be sharing my apartment with such a beautiful woman.”

Lucy can feel herself blushing. “You think I’m beautiful?” she blurts out before she can stop herself.

She can see Alex’s cheeks turn pink in the candlelight. 

“Yeah,” Alex says. 

Lucy doesn’t want to read into Alex’s blush or her words or the way she licks her lips whilst Lucy looks at her because she knows that if she does, it’ll give her hope. Hope-

Hope is dangerous. It’s dangerous because things are already so blurred between them. It’s dangerous because Alex is a leader in the Jewish community and Lucy isn’t. It’s dangerous because Lucy has heard the whispers and the speculation surrounding her and Alex.

And yet, despite all of that, Lucy still reaches out to take Alex’s hand and give it a squeeze. She doesn’t miss the way Alex’s throat bobs as she swallows, or the way that Alex licks her lips again.

“You’re beautiful yourself, Danvers,” she says.

Alex ducks her head. “Shut up,” she mumbles, cheeks as red as her hair.

Lucy smirks. “No, shan’t, because as a lawyer, I’m honour bound to admit the truth whenever possible.”

Her smirk flickers for just a moment when Alex squeezes her hand back.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a sap, Lane?” 

Lucy rolls her eyes. “I’m not a sap,” she argues. 

“Oh, you totally are,” Alex says.

Lucy grumbles and takes another bite of sayadieh instead of arguing further, because it’s true. She is a sap for Alex Danvers.

(And maybe, more than a little bit in love with her too).


	5. Moonlight - The Directorship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy's not sure if it's love, but it definitely is something. Something that makes her stomach twist when she thinks about it, something that makes her heart race whenever she sees Alex smile. Something that makes her scared and nervous and breathless all at the same time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 5's prompt is mine. It's inspired by the bio-luminescent phenomenon that happened on the West Coast a few months back.

This is a bad idea.

Lucy will admit that this isn’t the worst one she’s ever had to deal with. Still, on a scale of one to ten, going to the beach in the middle of the night whilst on the run from the authorities is probably a solid seven. It’s not like she could have said no though, not with the way Alex’s eyes lit up when news reported the glowing waves at the beach. It was enough to have her crumbling like wet tissue paper the second Alex turned to ask if they could go.

Which is how she finds herself standing on the shore of Cardiff Reef at two in the morning. 

The beach itself is deserted, save for her and Alex. The regulars and tourists who have been in the newsreels since the phenomenon started have long since gone back to their homes or hotels. After so long on the run, the lack of people around them allows Lucy to breathe a little easier. 

“You sure you don’t want to join me, Lane?” 

Lucy glances at Alex. “There’s only one board, Danvers,” she points out. “Besides, I’m not dressed to surf.”

“We can do tandem,” Alex says, “and surfing in your underwear is like surfing in a bathing suit.”

There’s something about the grin that Alex gives her right after that that makes Lucy’s stomach flip. If Lucy didn’t know better, she would say that Alex is flirting with her. She does know better, though. She’s been on the run with Alex for the better part of two weeks after all, and knows that Alex Danvers has absolutely zero game.

“I’m fine, Danvers,” Lucy says. “One of us has to stay on shore to keep watch.”

There may not be anyone on the beach right now, but Lucy still isn’t keen on taking chances. They haven’t made it this far by being lax.

Alex shrugs. “Suit yourself.” Another grin. “Just holler if you change your mind.”

She runs towards the waves before Lucy can say anything.

Lucy, for her part, just rolls her eyes. That’s such an Alex Danvers thing to do - running towards something without waiting for a response or back up. It’s not like she needs back up though. Not when Lucy has her back even from the shore.

Lucy sits back as she watches Alex hit the water. Even at the distance she’s at, she swears she can see Alex smiling the minute her board leaves the shore. That’s something Alex hasn’t done much of since they went on the run together: smile. She won’t admit it out loud, but Lucy misses Alex’s smiles. They’re brighter than Kara’s and they never fail to send Lucy’s heart pounding.

Her heart is pounding right now. It’s been pounding ever since she first set eyes on Alex Danvers in the DEO’s interrogation room. Lucy would call it uncomfortable, if she hadn’t grown used to the sensation months ago. 

Lucy spots a streak of blue in the waves. It’s more deliberate than the other streaks that have appeared throughout the night. A quick sweep with her eyes reveals why: Alex has finally caught a good wave.

Alex looks ethereal out on the water. She’s standing on her board, hand outstretched as it skims the wave behind her. It’s a move that leaves a bright blue trail as her board cuts through the water and makes Alex appear to be larger than life.

Lucy lets her eyes follow the trail of blue before settling back on Alex. 

(They always go back to Alex).

She wants to flop back onto the sand, if only to get her mind off of Alex. She won’t though. She won’t, because no matter what Lucy does, Alex always seems to always be on Lucy’s mind these days. Alex’s smile, her laugh, the way her face scrunches up when Kara takes the last posticker - Lucy can’t get any of it out of her head. 

Lucy swallows. 

Just thinking about the smile that’s undoubtedly on Alex’s face as she surfs right now has Lucy feeling...things. She’s not sure if it’s love, but it’s definitely something. It’s something that makes her stomach twist when she thinks about it, something that makes her heart race whenever she sees Alex smiling. It’s something that frustrates Lucy just a bit because-

Because the timing couldn’t be worse. Because they’re pretending to be a couple whilst on the run from the DEO. Lucy considers herself to be a pretty good actress - a courtroom is a stage that demands one’s best performance after all - but she’s finding it increasingly hard to convince herself that what she’s doing is an act. It’s hard to convince herself that the way she holds Alex when they’re travelling in public doesn’t mean anything when Alex always snuggles a little closer.

There’s a whoop of exhilaration that makes Lucy startle. She glances up just in time to see Alex take her board into the air. Alex isn’t in the air for very long, but the way the water lights up under her and the way the moon shines behind her are enough to make Lucy’s breath stutter to a stop. Not for the first time, does Lucy wish she had a camera, because the image in front of her is one that ought to be preserved forever. 

Alex makes the landing look easy. For her, it probably is, now that Lucy thinks about it. There’s a lot of things that Alex makes look easy: being a good sister, a good agent, a good person. She’s everything Lucy isn’t. Lucy figures she should be jealous - and once upon a time, she thought she was - but she isn’t. She’s in  _ awe _ . She’s in awe of the woman on the water and how Alex refused to compromise herself, even if it led to the mess they now find themselves in. 

Lucy is so caught up on Alex that she doesn’t notice Alex paddling back towards shore. It’s only when Alex is walking up from the ocean, surfboard under her arm, that Lucy blinks to find the redhead dripping wet. Lucy’s breath catches in her throat because Alex-

Alex looks breathtaking. 

Lucy can’t take her eyes off of Alex. If she had thought the moonlight had made Alex look radiant whilst out on the water, the way it catches her now makes her look even more so. Alex is still smiling and it’s still warm and Lucy’s stomach won’t stop fluttering at the sight. Alex looks like she feels lighter, like the stress of being on the run is no longer on her mind and god, would Lucy give anything to keep it that way because Alex Danvers deserves that. Alex Danvers deserves so fucking much and Lucy wants to be the one to give it to her. 

Alex stops in front of Lucy, board still under her arm. “You ready to go, Luce?”

It slips out so casually that at first, Lucy’s not sure she heard Alex correctly. The expectant look she gets from Alex a few beats later, coupled with the way Alex bites her lip, tells Lucy that she did.

She clears her throat. “Yeah, ready when you are, Danvers,” she says.

She shakes out the towel that they brought and hands it over to Alex. Alex towels off quickly. It takes everything Lucy has to not swallow her tongue as she takes in Alex’s tousled hair. It’s an image that’s straight out of her best (or worst) dreams, the ones that have her waking up with her chest heaving and a body that feels like it’s on fire. 

And Lucy does feel that way, like she’s on fire. She feels like she’s on fire because she’s staring, and she knows that Alex knows that Lucy’s staring. Lucy knows that because Alex’s eyes are sweeping over her and Alex is biting her lip and Lucy’s fairly certain she’s never felt this hot in her life. The ocean breeze isn’t enough to cool her off. Not when Alex licks her lips like  _ that _ .

Alex holds a hand out. 

Lucy takes it without a word. The next thing she knows, Alex is pulling her up. The force behind the move is unexpected. It sends Lucy stumbling into Alex. She yelps, hands flying to Alex’s shoulders in an attempt to keep them both from crashing back into the sand. For the most part, she’s successful. She feels Alex take a step back to keep them steady. Lucy takes a deep breath to get her own bearings. Then, her position registers with her brain.

She’s pressed up against Alex. Her shirt is growing increasingly damp because Alex’s hadn’t finished drying her front off before pulling Lucy up, but Lucy can’t bring herself to be annoyed. Not when her arms are around Alex’s shoulders like this. Not when Alex is staring down at her with something that looks akin to awe. Not when Alex is biting her lower lip like  _ that _ again. 

Lucy barely dares to breathe. She doesn’t want to ruin the moment. She and Alex have been playing the role of a couple in public for weeks now, but they’ve never shared something like this in private before. And that’s what this moment is: private. It’s just the two of them standing on a beach in southern California with a glowing ocean and the full moon as their backdrop. 

Lucy doesn’t want it to end. Then, Alex’s lips twitch into a smile that’s somewhere between shy and devious. Lucy barely has time to process the expression before Alex leans down and brushes her lips against Lucy’s cheek. The feel of Alex’s lips against her skin doesn’t last long, but it’s enough to make Lucy freeze in place anyway.

Alex pulls away. “Race you to the car!” she announces, before sprinting away and leaving Lucy on the beach.

Lucy rolls her eyes and jogs after Alex. She can’t stop the fond smile that rises to her lips even as she shouts, “You’re a fucking cheater, Danvers!”

It’s not love, not quite yet. But it is pretty damn close. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget to leave a comment and kudos below!
> 
> On a more serious note: please stay safe. This pandemic isn't over. Wash your hands, keep social distancing (if you're in a position to do so), and remember that black lives matter. If you're going out to protest, wear proper PPE, write your phone numbers on non-visible parts of your body, and keep your digital comms off of non-encrypted communication platforms.


End file.
